


and love is not a victory march

by SomeEnchantedEve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Pre-Series, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:46:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeEnchantedEve/pseuds/SomeEnchantedEve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Brandon's death, Hoster Tully chooses to ally his house with the Targaryen cause rather than the rebels. Despite this, Catelyn and Ned find their paths crossing over battle lines. </p><p>A pre-series AU written for the ASOIAF Big Bang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand thank yous to my beta-reader, Alex, for taking on yet ANOTHER huge project right on the heels of my Heroine Big Bang - thank you, thank you, thank you!!
> 
> I hope you enjoy - comments are greatly appreciated, as this was in the works for quite a long time! :) 
> 
> A thank you as well to my partnering artist in this project, Knightmist/Ilovedamaidasredasautumn! [Click here for her lovely accompanying graphic!](http://ilovedamaidasredasautumn.tumblr.com/post/68358098585/fanfic-and-love-is-not-a-victory-march-by)

It rains from the moment the northern force begins their siege, as though the gods themselves are cursing them – and perhaps, Ned thinks, that is the case. The gods of the Riverlands are the southron Seven and are not likely to smile down upon a northern army – especially one set on besieging a castle currently housing no more than servants, children, and maidens. Despite resenting the ache in every muscle of his body and the way the water soaks between the cracks of his armor to turn his clothes heavy and sodden, Ned cannot blame the gods for showing their wrath. It is a business that he finds most distasteful, as well, devoid of the honor that comes from facing a foe on the field, looking him in the eye during battle. 

The downpour is cold in a way completely foreign from the brisk frigidity of the North. It settles into his bones as a constant damp chill that no manner of layers or seeking of cover will abate. At night when Ned lays upon his cot and listens to the rain battering the sides of his tent, he allows his mind to wander to warmer, drier places. When his eyes drift closed, he is back in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, sandwiched between Benjen and Brandon. The flames of the crackling fires had danced upon Lady Ashara’s hair, making it shine like dark polished steel. 

Yet when he thinks of that evening now, his mind most often wanders to Brandon beside him – laughing, drinking, japing, _alive_ \- and the fist of grief closes tightly around Ned’s heart. He cannot help but wonder what Brandon would think of the siege of Riverrun, of what their father would say to see the hope of his carefully planned southron match so thoroughly destroyed. _I tried,_ Ned tells himself furiously, in an attempt to batter away the lingering guilt. He would have wed Brandon’s betrothed, to secure the swords of House Tully and to cement the alliance that Rickard Stark had arranged. That Hoster Tully had rejected his offer is nothing short of a terrible affront to House Stark, and therefore he should not feel guilty at all about the eight hundred men lingering outside those sandstone walls. 

_Not guilty, but perhaps still foolish,_ he thinks when he studies their target from the edge of his tent. Lord Tully had left his brother the Blackfish as the castellan of the castle when he departed to fight for his king, and from his studies of wars past, Ned knows that Brynden Tully is sharper and wilier than most. The castle had barely been within the sights of Ned’s army before the sluice gates had opened and filled the wide moat on Riverrun’s open side. Now it sits as an island adrift, and Ned remembers his father saying with satisfaction that Riverrun could stand for two years, a thousand years ago when he had been looking for a match for Brandon. 

If Brandon had lived, he would have been wed to Lady Catelyn by now. Ned wonders if that would have made a difference, if the Tullys would have sided with the rebels rather than the loyalists if the match had already been made. Brandon would have made a more charismatic leader of the northern troops, but Hoster Tully is known to be notoriously stubborn. Perhaps all of Rickard Stark’s work would have still been for naught, and Brandon would have had to face his good-father in the field. 

There are nights when he looks upon the castle with calculation, wondering how the walls across the water may be breached, and nights when he stews in guilt, knowing that there is little more than the skeleton of a household guard within – that, and the Blackfish, easily worth ten of Ned’s soldiers in battle prowess. And then there are the times that he looks upon it in envy, thinking of those behind the walls, warm and dry and perhaps even well-fed, if the stores had been well-kept through the years of winter. _This is a folly,_ he writes to Robert, but if the raven bearing the message has found its way through the pounding rains, he has no way of knowing. On the other hand, he is certain that his invitation to the Blackfish to come and treat with him was received, and merely ignored. _And why not? Why not stay warm and dry within the castle walls, and wait for us to wash away like melted snow?_ he thinks bitterly. In one of Jon Arryn’s rare, hastily-scribbled messages, he learns of Mace Tyrell’s siege upon Storm’s End and how the loyalist army feasts within sight of the castle walls. It is a far cry from the waterlogged futility of their campaign in the Riverlands; rather than force the Blackfish’s hand, Ned imagines he is having a good laugh at the bedraggled scattering of soldiers outside, kept safely at bay by the rivers between them. 

It is a point of honor for Robert, capturing Riverrun. In truth, winning and holding the castle is far more trouble than it is worth; the Riverlands have always been conflict-laden and difficult to protect, hardly an ideal stronghold in wartime. But Robert had taken much greater insult at Hoster Tully’s rejection than Ned had. _When we win the war, I’ll marry his precious girls to blacksmiths,_ Robert had boasted before they had parted, crumpling the letter from the Lord Paramount and feeding it to the flames. _A few years of meager living will break that undue pride._

Ned’s father had always called Hoster Tully a proud man, but a cunning one, as well, and Ned had been far more concerned than angry when Tully had refused to ally himself with their cause. Their chances had seemed a bit more dismal that day. 

The days stretch on in a cold, damp, monotonous blur, and when the rider in Tully livery finally comes to the camp, bearing a note from the Blackfish saying that he will meet with Lord Stark, Ned suspects it is more an attempt to combat boredom than to come to a true accord. At the very least, it is something different, and as word spreads through the ranks about the impending meeting, morale rises with the illusion of progress being made. _I should thank him for that, at least, _Ned thinks grimly; there is nothing heroic or glorious about sieging a castle in the Riverlands, not as there is in a bloody battle. Ned has no interest in such things, but he is not fool enough to think that the men who follow him – young, eager, thirsty for war – feel the same. This endless blanket of nothingness leaves them restless, and restless soldiers are a danger to all around them.__

__When the time comes, Howland Reed and Martyn Cassel flank Ned, one on each side. The rain has still not abated, and Ned must push his helm up in order to see as a figure appears from the haze that shrouds the castle and its gates. The Blackfish rides unaccompanied and lightly armored, and Ned does not know if he means it as a compliment to Ned’s honor or an insult to his battle prowess. The latter would not be unexpected; Ned is no Brynden Blackfish, no Barristan Selmy, and he lacks Robert’s brute strength and single-mindedness in the field. And yet Ned’s stubborn, relentless sense of duty, to do what Robert commanded of him, has led them here – a step closer to the end of this mess, once and for all. _There are places for men like me in war, after all,_ Ned thinks wryly. _ _

__The Blackfish dismounts, and his boots land in the mud with a loud squelch. The rain seems to bother him not at all – though, Ned thinks rather sourly, he imagines he, too, would not be troubled by it if he had warm dry walls at his back, awaiting his return. “Ser Brynden,” Ned greets, his voice even and polite. “Thank you for meeting us.”_ _

__The Blackfish shrugs, the reins of his destier looped casually over his black glove. “I’ve always said a siege is a tedious business. This promised to be a much-needed rest from listening to my nephew complain of his hunger.” A stab of guilt twists Ned’s stomach at that – Edmure Tully is but ten, younger even than Benjen, and certainly had no say in the wars of those much older than him – but the Blackfish does not linger on the subject. “And I must admit that I was curious to see you. I knew your brother Brandon well, and he would have smashed himself upon the gate by now, cocky and impatient as he was.” A pause, and for a moment, the older man’s eyes seem to gentle. “Seven rest his soul,” he adds gruffly._ _

__“I am not Brandon,” Ned replies stiffly, uncomfortable with the sympathy. The pain is still too raw, the wound too gaping to find comfort in the words of others._ _

__“As you have not been swept away by the river in a folly, it seems you are not,” Brynden Blackfish allows. “And so I decided to come and see what sort of man you were for myself.”_ _

__“The time has come to relinquish Riverrun in the name of King Robert,” Ned says sternly, abruptly changing the subject to less personal matters. “Lord Tully took the bulk of your forces with him when he went to join Prince Rhaegar’s forces. You are far outnumbered.”_ _

__“Aye, so we are,” the Blackfish agrees, and his piercing blue eyes slide past Ned and his companions, wandering over the sodden forces waiting in the distance, through the misting rain. “And despite that, you ask me to relinquish the castle – you do not simply take it. You northerners may keep your snow, but it seems water leaves you baffled.” His gaze returns to Ned’s face, and his voice grows hard. “My brother left me in charge of his home and his children, and I will allow neither to come to harm.”_ _

__Instinctively, Ned bristles at the implication. “Your nieces and nephew are in no danger,” he replies shortly. “They would be treated with the upmost respect, I assure you. They are safe.”_ _

__The Blackfish snorts in response. “I have seen more wars than you have, boy. Maidens and children are never safe.”_ _

__Unbidden, Ned’s thoughts wander to Lyanna – a maiden and a child both, no matter how she fancied herself a woman grown. _Are you safe tonight, sister?_ he wonders, and though he is far from his old gods, he finds himself offering a silent prayer to them regardless. _The old gods have no eyes in the south,_ his father’s gruff voice echoes in his mind, and Ned’s resolve to take the castle doubles. Unlike pleading with gods who could not see this far from the weirwoods of the north, perhaps holding Riverrun would somehow help recover his sister. _ _

__“I, too, find little joy in a siege,” Ned says gravely, his fingers curling into fists. “But if I have to starve you out, I will do so, as commanded. No boat will come to dock at your Water Gate, I assure you. I have archers at the ready, and they are not likely to discriminate. If we must raze the lands to force your hand, I will do so. I would much rather come to an accord. Think carefully of what you would wish Lord Tully to find upon his return home._ _

__The knight’s weathered face twists into a bitter smirk at that. “Suddenly not so earnest about the safety of my nieces and nephews, are you, Lord Stark? Perhaps it is for the best. We should not waste our time pretending that war is a noble business.”_ _

__Involuntarily, Ned’s teeth clench. Ser Brynden’s words strike their mark a bit too true; blustering threats are not something Ned takes pleasure in, nor something he would normally even consider. _It is the rain and the hunger,_ he tells himself – a reason, though not an excuse. The water does not seem to bother the Blackfish, and despite Ned’s threats to starve Riverrun out, he has no reason to believe that provisions are not better within the castle than they are at the camp outside its walls. And by the unconcerned expression on the Blackfish’s face, Ned suspects he realizes that the threat to raze the lands is an empty one. Robert would urge him, and Brandon would have pushed forward without a second thought. But for Ned, the mere idea makes him ill; they are not at war with the smallfolk of the Riverlands. _ _

___You are not at war with the Tullys, either,_ a small voice at the back of his mind taunts him – a voice that sounds remarkably like his father. Irritated, Ned pushes the thought away. The Tullys had chosen their course, and like the rest of the Great Houses, would have to face the consequences of that choice at war’s end, one way or another. _ _

__As Ned opens his mouth to argue, the Blackfish’s face changes; for the first time, Ned sees surprise on the older man’s face, spreading like molasses over his features, slow as in a dream. The moment hangs in the air, unnaturally long, and then with a jolt, time surges forward again, with a sudden, blinding pain in his leg, so shocking that for a moment, the entire world goes white._ _

__It is only when Howland crouches down beside him that Ned realizes he has fallen._ _

__\--_ _

__The days stretch long and empty inside the castle._ _

__Sometimes Catelyn imagines that the walls will simply not be able to contain Edmure and his boundless, restless energy. He is young and used to playing outside in the sun of the godswood, not trapped inside with a thousand rules and restrictions put in place for his own good. She could recite them like a mantra, their uncle’s stern words on the day the northern army had appeared on their horizon. _Keep away from the windows. Put out your candles as soon as the sky darkens. Do not even think of going out to the grounds._ _ _

__They are dark words, hard for summer southron children to accept, and Edmure has always been the softest of the three Tully siblings. He defies their uncle’s orders, lifting up on tiptoes to peer from the windows and get a glimpse of the army at their gates, and then racing down the corridor when a passing steward or maid anxiously shoos him away. A week ago, Catelyn had discovered him with damp hair and mud on his boots, and she had barely resisted the urge to strike him in terror at the realization that he had snuck outside. To Edmure, it is little more than a game – one that he has tired of and wants ended._ _

__Yet as infuriating as her brother’s behavior is, Catelyn prefers it to Lysa’s self-imposed confinement. Day and night, her sister stays locked in her room, refusing entry to all but her maid at mealtimes. She had allowed Catelyn to sit with her at the beginning of the siege, but when Catelyn had tried to dry her sister’s tears by reassuring her that their father would soon be home, Lysa had demanded she leave and had henceforth refused to speak to anyone or to even come to the door. It is unusual for Lysa; she has always been inclined to moodiness, but normally she chooses to sulk and pout in the Great Hall, or in their lesson room – the better that everyone may see that she has been offended._ _

__After nearly a moon’s turn of this strange behavior, Catelyn seeks out Maester Vyman in her concern, fearing that perhaps her sister is plagued by illness. It is a task that she has set out to do at least a dozen times before, and once again, she is distracted by Edmure on her way to the maester’s chambers. At the end of the long hall, her brother stands on his tiptoes, peering out the window to the gates below, and Catelyn resists the urge to grab him by the scruff of his neck in irritation. “Edmure, come away from the window,” she orders, her voice brokering no room for argument – and of course, Edmure argues with her regardless._ _

__“But Uncle Brynden is riding back with someone,” Edmure protests, glancing over his shoulder and ignoring her command. “I watched him ride out alone, but now there is another horse and – ” he glances again, “ – two other men. One is on the horse. I think someone is hurt.”_ _

__Fear seizes her in a vice grip at that, and she strides across the corridor, disregarding her own concerns to join her brother, despite their uncle’s warnings. She can easily see over Edmure’s head and down to the courtyard in front of the gates below, but whomever Edmure had seen has already disappeared, presumably through the gate into the castle. “Our uncle isn’t hurt, is he?” she worries, and then another horrifying possibility occurs to her. _Could it be Father? Has something happened to him?_ She keeps these terrible thoughts to herself, unwilling to frighten her brother. _ _

__Yet Edmure’s face is not frightened at all. It is exhilarated, as though he were watching a tourney or a dance. “Do you think Uncle Brynden killed Lord Stark?” he asks, with the eagerness of a child desperate for diversion, with the innocence of a boy who cannot truly grasp the finality of death and the futility of war. But Catelyn, who wakes each morning with the scent of smoke-burnt flesh lingering in her nostrils and Brandon’s strangled cries ringing in her ears, cannot bring herself to wish death upon her betrothed’s brother, not even if that would mean the end of the siege._ _

__“No,” Catelyn tells him severely. “They met under the banners of parlay. Uncle Brynden would never dishonor that. No honorable man would.” She gives Edmure a stern look, trying to impart the seriousness of such an offense, but as ever, he pays little attention to her._ _

__She does not have to wait long to be proven right; their uncle finds them barely an hour later, looking weary and irritated but mercifully unharmed. Catelyn cannot help but embrace him in relief, resting her head on the Tully crest sewn onto his tunic. He gives her a brief squeeze but then holds her at arm’s length, ignoring Edmure’s endless litany of questions (‘ _Is someone hurt? Did you kill someone, Uncle? Who was it?_ ’). “I require your assistance, my niece,” he says, and he offers her his arm as he would to a lady. Her father has expected her to act as a woman grown since her mother’s death, but her uncle has always seen her as a child. That he now appeals to her for help is almost frightening, and Catelyn’s fingers tremble slightly at she slips her hand into the crook of his elbow. _ _

__“You,” he says, pointing a finger at Edmure, who scowls in response. “Stay here and behave. And how many times must I tell you to stay away from the windows? There is a war outside our gates, lad.”_ _

__“Where are you going? I am the heir to Riverrun, you have to tell me!” Edmure demands loudly, but Uncle Brynden sweeps Catelyn from the room as though Edmure has not spoken at all._ _

__She nearly has to run to keep up with the Blackfish’s brisk pace. “It isn’t Father, is it?” she blurts out, voicing her most immediate fear as soon as they are out of Edmure’s earshot._ _

__Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her uncle’s face soften, though his pace does not slow at all. “No, your father is well, from last I’ve heard,” he assures her, and Catelyn releases a breath that she had not even known she was holding. “But one of our more stupid bowmen decided that a peaceful parlay would be the best time to attempt an assassination of Lord Stark.” His face grows hard and cold once more, a scowl pulling at the corners of his lips. From his expression, Catelyn is suddenly absurdly grateful that Edmure had kept his theory that their uncle had killed Lord Stark to himself. “And along with an appalling lack of honor, he has remarkably poor aim,” he adds sourly. “He injured the man’s leg. I need you to find Maester Vyman and bring him to the sickroom to tend Lord Stark, little Cat. He is our guest for now. I must speak with Lord Reed in your father’s solar and try to convince him that this was _not_ a plot, or else I fear that the northmen outside our doors will not remain satisfied with a siege.” _ _

__With a frustrated sigh, he releases her hand and gives her a gentle push on the back, urging her towards the winding stone staircase. “Go on, now. And make sure Vyman does not make a muck of it. The wound should be easy enough to treat, and the last thing we need are any complications.”_ _

__\--_ _

__It is through no fault of Maester Vyman’s that the wound festers the next morning, and Lord Stark falls into a fevered sleep. Having left him alone to his duty the night before, Catelyn had knocked on the maester’s door in the morning to see how his patient fared. Finding the maester missing , she had made her way to the sickroom with a gnawing apprehension in her stomach._ _

__Vyman answers the door at her first knock, and his face sags in relief at the sight of her, as though she could somehow remedy the situation. He quickly ushers her in, and she hesitates on the threshold. A soldier’s sickroom is not the proper place for a lady, and this Lord Stark is a stranger to her. It is entirely different than the times she would assist Vyman with some ailment of Lysa’s or Edmure’s, and she wonders if she should refuse to enter and leave this very moment to find her uncle._ _

__But it is her uncle’s very words that ring in her head – ‘ _make sure he does not make a muck of it_ ’ – and so she crosses the room to see the damage. And if she is honest with herself, she is curious, as well, to see the man in the flesh after having avoided laying eyes on him the night before. _ _

__While the maester bends over his work table, Catelyn takes the opportunity to study Lord Stark - Brandon’s brother, the man who could have, at her father’s word, been her husband. _He is not nearly as handsome as Brandon_ , she thinks rather unkindly, and she suspects it is not only the toils of war that make him so. His face is long and hard, as though his features were carved from marble or stone – something inflexible, immovable. _A cruel face, perhaps,_ she considers, and she wonders if an equally cold heart lingers beneath the exterior. But Brandon had loved him – he had japed about how his brother Ned was solemn and dull, but had loved him all the same. It is for Brandon’s sake that she would see him live. _ _

__“It needs a poultice,” Maester Vyman murmurs, rounding the bed to inspect the wound on Stark’s leg that is weeping pus and blood. “And to be cleaned with boiled wine. Or else the infection shall spread to his heart.”_ _

__“Do it, then,” Catelyn instructs, with all the dignity she has learned as the lady of the castle._ _

__The maester hesitates for the briefest of moments, leaning in and lowering his voice, as though the man before them is in any state to overhear their conversation, as he tosses and turns from feverish dreams. “My lady…if he dies, the siege will be broken,” he says with some matter of reluctance, and Catelyn purses her lips in displeasure. “But if he lives, we have afforded their army a way into the castle.”_ _

__“Or we have won ourselves a valuable hostage,” Catelyn argues, trying to keep the edge from her voice. Maester Vyman is sworn to the service of Riverrun, and he is merely trying to do his duty – she must not begrudge him that. “My father would be pleased to have Lord Baratheon’s closest friend captured within our grasp. And my uncle has ordered that all be done to treat him. His injury was ill-done of our guard.” Her eyes flicker once more to the man sprawled across the sick bed, and she wonders if their care will make a difference at all, or if the gods will take him into their keep regardless. Was her uncle correct? Would Lord Stark’s death put them all in even greater danger from the soldiers outside their gates? “Do all that you must.”_ _

__With a low bow, and a murmured ‘my lady,’ the maester departs to follow her bidding and retrieve the necessary ingredients. As Catelyn looks upon Eddard Stark, she offers a quick prayer to the Seven that she has not made the wrong decision._ _

__Vyman had covered him with furs at some point, perhaps hoping that the fever would swelter and break, but Stark has kicked them to the end of the bed. Sweat plasters dark hair to his forehead and beads in the unkempt beard that grows across his cheeks, while his entire face is flush with fever. Struck by a pang of sympathy beyond the call of duty or tactics, Catelyn dips her handkerchief into the basin of water the maester has left behind, gently brushing his forehead with the damp cloth._ _

__His hand snatches her wrist so quickly that she yelps in surprise, and her lips part to call for help when his eyes, glazed and confused, flicker open briefly, seeing without seeing. With a moan of discomfort, he brings her cool hand to his fevered cheek, turning his face and pressing his hot lips briefly into her palm. Catelyn freezes in shock, unable to withdraw from his iron grasp, which is surprisingly strong for an injured, ill man. He murmurs a name - a woman’s name, barely decipherable - and instinctively, Catelyn cranes her head closer to listen. _Who is he thinking of?_ she wonders despite herself – could it be that this seemingly cold, hard man has a love waiting for him at the end of the war, a lady he wishes were beside him in his moment of need? _ _

__“Lya,” he croaks, louder this time, and his fingers tighten almost painfully on her wrist. “Lya, I am so sorry…”_ _

__Her heart breaks for him at that moment, as it broke for Brandon the day he rode away from her and turned his eyes instead to King’s Landing. She had not argued; who better than a Tully to understand the ties of family? _He does this for his sister_ , she remembers as she looks down at Ned, who clutches her hand as though it were a lifeline, and as the thought comes to her, it is suddenly hard to hate him for besieging her castle. _He does this for his father, and for Brandon._ _ _

__Suddenly, his face seems a great deal less cruel to her. _He is little more than a boy,_ she thinks, and she is overwhelmed by guilt at her hesitance to care for him. He is so young, and he does not deserve to die. _ _

__Catelyn sinks into the chair beside the bed, and she waits for the morning._ _


	2. Part 2

The first thing Ned notices is the ache in his leg. The pain throbs like a second heartbeat, and he finds himself matching his breathing to it, inhaling when it stabs particularly sharply, exhaling when it blissfully abates for the briefest of moments before beginning again. He lies still for several long moments, too overwhelmed by the aching to even open his eyes, but eventually, he becomes accustomed to the pain – though not relieved of it. 

The next thing he realizes is how hot he is. After nearly a moon’s turn of being damp and cold, the dry warmth is strange enough that he forces his eyes open to take stock of the reason. He does not recognize the room he is in, but he is undoubtedly inside, and it takes a few moments for him to recall why that might be. For a few peaceful seconds, he allows himself to imagine he had merely dreamt a war, had imagined his father’s and brother’s deaths, and that he is simply in a room of the Eyrie that he and Robert had never explored. But the heavy curtains draping the high windows are a deep blue trimmed in red, and it is before long, Ned can lie to himself no longer. 

He remembers meeting the Blackfish near the gate of the castle, and though he doesn’t recall the words they exchanged, he remembers his own discontent well enough, and the sudden, shocking pain even better. _Someone attacked me,_ he thinks fuzzily, but that does not seem right. The Blackfish had arrived alone and unarmed, and had seemed nearly as surprised as Ned had at the sudden, violent turn their meeting had taken. Surely, if the man had wanted him dead, Ned would be so by now – he is ashamed at how quickly he had fallen, how he had needed to be hoisted upon the back of Howland’s horse and led through the very gates he sieged. He does not even know how long he has slept in this bed, but besides his leg he seems well enough. _No, it could not have been the Blackfish._

With the frazzled senses of a soldier used to living on alert, in the habit of sleeping with one eye left cracked and scouring for enemies, Ned is suddenly keenly aware that he is not alone. He lolls his head on the pillow, and he is surprised when his eyes fix upon his companion. He had expected Howland or Martyn, or perhaps the maester of Riverrun or even the Blackfish himself, but instead, he finds that he is left alone with a girl – a woman, really. 

Ned knows at first glance that she is most certainly a lady, and not a serving maid or a septa. Her dark blue gown is richly embroidered at the bodice, and a strand of pearls is wrapped around her white throat. Her face is tilted down to the stitching in her lap, so that all he sees is the red crown of her head, while rings gleam from her fingers as her hands move deftly over her work. 

As though drawn by his gaze, her chin rises, and she glances at the bed. When she sees him awake and watching her, she lets out a soft cry of surprise, dropping her sewing in her lap, the needle clattering to the floor. Ned winces, sorry to have startled her as he tried to work through the fog of what had happened to him. 

“My lady,” he says, his voice hoarse from disuse. “Forgive me…Lady Catelyn,” he adds, hazarding a guess. He had never met Brandon’s betrothed, but his brother had japed about their father picking him a lucky bride, ‘kissed-by-fire,’ as the wildlings would call her. _I loved a maid as red as autumn, with the sunset in her hair,_ he had warbled off-key, mead sloshing from his tankard, yet he had still taken a serving maid to his bed that evening. 

He forces his thoughts away from Brandon, away from the pain that his memory brings, and considers the woman before him. Her hair is certainly the right color, she has the look and bearing of a noble maid, and Ned is fairly sure that the other Tully girl is too young to be the lady standing before him. 

She rises, her body rigid and her shoulders squared, yet her eyes gleam with brief interest when he guesses her identity. “It is good to see you awake, Lord Stark,” she says, her voice the picture of cool courtesy, and she neither confirms nor denies his suspicion. “The maester was most concerned about your leg.” 

“My leg…” he murmurs in response. He had briefly forgotten his pain, but it returns with renewed vigor. Instinctively, he reaches down, pushing the furs away distractedly to take stock of the damage beneath. His breeches have been rolled to above his knees, and his right leg is swaddled in thick bandages that he prods hesitantly, hissing at the stabbing ache that shoots from his thigh straight up his spine. 

“Be careful,” she warns. “He had to cut into the muscle. The wound had festered.” Briefly, Ned wonders how she would know such a thing – certainly a highborn maiden would be shielded from the indelicacy of war injuries. Her practicality and forthrightness remind him keenly of Lyanna, and he has to look away. Ned directs all of his attention to his leg instead, which is left immobile and awkward and aching. 

“And so he decided to make a cripple of me,” he says, more to himself than to Lady Catelyn – for who else could she be? – yet he is still surprised at the bitterness he throws at her. But he cannot help but be angry, furious at any delay that keeps him from recovering his sister. If the siege of Riverrun had felt pointless, lying prone within the castle walls makes him feel more impotent by far. 

Lady Catelyn’s eyes flash indignantly. “He saved your _life,_ ” she replies tightly. There is enough latent fury beneath her carefully controlled words that Ned realizes with a start that she is angry with him, that she has likely been waiting for a moment to express her displeasure. _Has she been sitting by my bedside, waiting for me to awaken, so that she may scold me?_ he wonders in irritation, but before he has a chance to confront her, a renewed wave of guilt crashes over him. Of course she is angry, of course she lashes out – he is sieging her home, trapping her with an army as effectively as he is now trapped by his injury. He cannot blame her for her anger, for perhaps even her hatred, and if speaking to him frostily is the worst way her feelings manifest, he is blessed indeed. He had lain unconscious for any number of days and had come to no lasting harm beyond what he had already suffered. 

Ned had written to her father once and offered to wed her in his brother’s place. He wonders if their first meeting would have been more pleasant had Lord Tully accepted his suit. 

“Forgive me, my lady,” he says quietly, contrite. “I meant no offense to the maester. I am grateful for his care, however unfortunate the need of it may be.” 

“And I am sorry that you have need of it,” she says, though to Ned, the courtesy rings false. “It was not my uncle’s doing. He would never treat with an enemy dishonorably.” 

Ned winces, and the words sit heavy in the air between them. Lady Catelyn flushes, as though embarrassed by her outburst, and looks away, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “But the archer responsible has been dismissed from the household guard,” she adds, her voice more even, though no less distant, as formal as a recitation of a lesson. “He has represented our house most shamefully, and for that, I am sorry, too.” 

“I do not wish for you to think of me as your enemy, my lady,” he says – he means the words gently, but they come out stiff and cold. It is hard to hear that she thinks of him as her enemy. His enemies are King Aerys and Prince Rhaegar, men who have hurt his family, as well as the armies that follow them despite their corruption. When he thinks of himself as warring against them, it is so easy to think of himself as good and right. It is much more difficult when a maiden from the Riverlands calls him her enemy; it blurs the lines of right and wrong. It makes him doubt, and Ned has doubt enough on his own. 

Lady Catelyn meets his eyes again, her gaze steady. Her voice is soft, but her words cut like daggers when she says, “You have an army outside our gates, my lord. What else could you be?” 

\--

Once it is clear that he will live, Catelyn resolves to keep herself from first the sickroom, and then the chamber that becomes Lord Stark’s. She has paid respect to Brandon’s memory by seeing his brother well again, despite the fact that his brother’s forces lay in wait outside of the castle. With just a word from Lord Stark, they would break the gate, and then where would her family be? 

To her chagrin, Lord Stark does not seem amenable to her unspoken plan, and he finds her often enough that Catelyn suspects that he deliberately seeks her – in the hall, in the study, in the library. She suspects if she kept to her room, she would be able to avoid him entirely; he is ever polite and proper, seeming not at all the type to disturb a lady in her bedchamber. Yet being confined to the castle chafes her enough, and she cannot bear the thought of locking herself in her chambers. 

In truth, if he were any other man, he would not be such poor company. He is as quiet and serious as Brandon had been boisterous and lively, and Lord Stark’s somberness suits her spirits, which are dampened after weeks of living like a recluse. Lord Stark does not speak again of her words when he woke in his sickbed, but there is a flicker in his eye that seems to suggest that they bother him still. So she does not know whether he seeks to goad her or to prove her wrong when he comes to stand beside her at the window, leaning heavily on the cane Maester Vyman had given him and testing the weight of the glass against the flat of his palm. At times, she wonders if the maester was right, if she has invited their enemy into the heart of their castle so that he may destroy them from the inside. But then there are other times, when his face will crease in dissatisfaction, and she wonders if he feels as trapped as she does – by circumstance, rather than by walls. 

Every day, his stride grows longer, his steps sturdier, his limp less pronounced. Catelyn wonders what deal Lord Stark struck with her uncle – surely her uncle would not let him leave and continue his siege? The thought makes her shiver, and she wraps her arms tightly around herself. 

Standing silently by her side, gazing out the long glass windows of the library to the green courtyard below, Lord Stark glances at her. “Are you cold, my lady?” he asks politely. 

“No,” she abruptly replies, unwilling to show even a hint of weakness. Her voice comes out more brusquely than she intends, and she softens – she is still the lady of Riverrun in her father’s absence, and she is determined to remember her courtesies. “You must find it terribly warm, compared to the North,” she offers, and to her surprise, he almost smiles. 

“I do prefer the cold,” he acknowledges, and despite the slight quirking at the corner of his lips, she cannot help but think _that is no surprise._ Eddard Stark is a polite man, perhaps an honorable man, but there is something within him that is frozen hard. She wonders if he shall ever be thawed, should he live through the war. “I spent most of my years in the Vale with Lord Arryn,” he adds, and she pulls her attention back to his words. “And Winterfell itself is heated by the hot springs, so it is warmer than you would think.”

“Oh,” Catelyn replies, caught off guard and therefore momentarily distracted from her gloom. “Brandon never mentioned that.” Brandon had spoken little of Winterfell, in truth. He had instead told her of riding the Rills and teased her with the stories that Old Nan used to tell him of the lands beyond the Wall, tales that she would relay to Lysa until they would shriek in terror and glee, at all once. 

“I never gave my condolences for your loss,” Lord Eddard says gravely, meeting her gaze briefly with his cool grey eyes. 

At his words, Catelyn feels her knees go weak, and she gropes for a hold on the wall, something to keep her on her feet. “My loss?” she squeaks, nearly breathless with fear, her heart pounding in her ears. _Has he had word about my father? Is that what he has been trying to build his courage to say to me?_

Lord Eddard’s frozen face shifts at her obvious distress, and he hurries to steady her with his hands on her upper arms. “Forgive me, my lady, I meant Brandon. I did not intend to worry you,” he says regretfully, and Catelyn releases her breath in a rush. 

_Brandon, he meant Brandon,_ she thinks, feeling relieved and guilty all at the same time. It is not that she does not mourn Brandon – she _does_ \- but she has come to terms with the reality of her loss, and fears to lose more still. And she did not think to hear sympathies for his death from this man, who had been Brandon’s sibling, who had lost his elder brother and father all on the same day. “I should be saying such to you, my lord,” she says quietly, and his eyes cloud over, as though he is far away – perhaps back in Winterfell, with his sister and brothers, whole and happy. 

“He is lost to both of us in either case,” he replies heavily, and once again, Catelyn is left feeling guilty for her ill thoughts of Lord Eddard. When he is awake and standing, it is all too easy to think of him as the man with an army at her gate and not as the boy who had called out for his sister. It is simpler to resent him for all that he has taken from her, rather than think on what this war has stolen from both of them. 

She watches his profile as he gazes out the window at the sun sinking below the horizon, its last rays catching on the Stark banners snapping in the breeze. His face is frozen hard, his grey eyes swirling with a storm of emotions that she cannot decipher. She wonders if anyone could, if there is someone who truly _knows_ Eddard Stark. “There is much still to live for,” she tells him, her voice almost pleading. She is unsure whether she is trying to convince him or herself. 

“Your uncle and I have struck a bargain,” he says, abruptly changing the subject. “Once your maester says that I am fit to mount a horse, my men and I will depart.” 

Catelyn blinks, surprised both by the sudden shift in conversation and the enormity of what he is telling her. “You will leave?” she repeats incredulously. “You and your army will leave Riverrun?” 

He turns to look at her, and the corner of his mouth twitches up in what she would call amusement in any other man. But Eddard Stark seems far too grave to find humor in shocking her – that is something she would expect of Brandon, who had always loved to surprise. “If _we_ do not leave, your uncle will not let _me_ leave,” he explains. “And my men will fall into disarray without my orders.” 

She narrows her eyes at this explanation; it feels too simple, too shallow. _If my uncle held him within, his second-in-command would order his soldiers to smash themselves upon the gate until Lord Stark was free,_ she thinks. _He wants to leave. He is looking for an excuse to go._

He seems to be able to tell by her face that she is wholly unconvinced. “In truth, my lady,” he says quietly, “your castle is hardly worth the taking. The Riverlands are poorly positioned and their borders nearly impossible to protect. My army’s efforts are far better spent elsewhere.” 

“Then why come in the first place?” she demands, driven to bluntness in her frustration. “Why bother trying to take Riverrun at all?” 

“They were Robert’s orders,” he replies matter-of-factly. “He was angry. Insulted, on my behalf, when your father refused my offer to wed you in Brandon’s place.” 

She should not be surprised at his forthrightness – she has not spent much time with Lord Eddard, but she has spent enough to know that he is not one for courtesies or pretty words. In the little they have spoken, they have never touched upon the subject of what they could have been, of the letter he sent to her father after Brandon’s death. _Had my father chosen differently, I would have met him on our wedding day,_ she thinks. She tries to imagine welcoming the army she so abhors, to envision the men at her gate drinking her father’s wine to her health and happiness. She cannot quite invision the man standing before her in a fine, new doublet, his beard neatly trimmed, awaiting her at the front of the sept. _Would he look so grim and solemn, were he here to wed, rather than to war?_

“And you?” she asks quietly, curious despite herself. “Were you wroth as well, my lord?” It does not truly matter. She has no power to assuage his anger, just as before she had no say whether his offer would be accepted or rejected. But the man before her is so cool, so seemingly controlled, that she cannot help but wonder if he would besiege a castle from hurt pride. 

“No,” he answers quietly. His grey eyes meet her gaze, serious, honest, and so piercing that she has to resist the urge to look away. “Make no mistake, my lady – our cause is just. But were I a father, I would hesitate before giving my daughter to be a traitor’s bride.” 

Catelyn bites her lip, uncertain how to respond. _I’m sorry_ would sound insincere, _you’re right_ would sound chiding. And so she remains silent until he looks away, gazing back out the window and down the length of the Trident as it stretches before the castle walls. 

“When we leave, I will see that a ship of provisions is allowed to pass,” he says, his voice sounding gentler now than she thought it could be. “I have no doubt of Riverrun’s abilities to withstand the war, but salted fish, bread, carrots, and onions have never hurt anyone.” 

The unexpected kindness makes tears spring to her eyes, and she looks away, blinking furiously. She cannot help but recall Edmure’s complaints of hunger when they sat to eat. She knows that he is truly getting enough, that he is merely unused to being so strictly rationed, but it had served as a reminder that their provisions would not last forever, and that before war’s end they may find themselves truly lacking. “I thank you,” she says, mustering her dignity with some difficulty. “For the sake of my siblings and our people.” 

“I would not have you starve, my lady,” he tells her, with more conviction and passion in his voice than she has heard from him thus far. “I do not wish to be your enemy. That is not why I called my banners, to terrorize maidens and children. I will be glad to leave this place and rejoin Robert’s forces. They march on the capital. That is where I should be.” 

_And that is where my father will be, as well,_ she thinks, with the accompanying rush of fear that she has nearly become accustomed to by now. “Please, do not kill my father,” she blurts, her hand reaching out to grasp the sleeve of Lord Eddard’s shirt. It is not a fair request, and her father would be ashamed to hear her make it. It is the pleading of a child, not the reasoning of a woman, yet she cannot help but ask it of him. “Forgive me,” she whispers, and the words are hard to form around the lump in her throat. “I know I should not ask. But I fear for him so much…” 

Lord Eddard’s face creases into a conflicted, troubled expression. “My lady…” he says hesitantly, and she regrets asking him to make such an impossible promise. She may be a summer, southron girl, but her uncle has long told her the nature of war, and she has had her share of sorrows in her life, which makes the potential loss of her father seem all the more unbearable. But it is not until Lord Eddard raises his hand, hesitantly wiping at her cheek with his thumb, that she realizes that her tears have spilled forth. She startles at the intimacy of the gesture, instinctively tipping her face down in embarrassment, and his hand falls awkwardly back to his side. 

“I should not have spoken so,” she says, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Let us talk of something else.” 

“I will not lie to you, my lady,” he says, in that straightforward manner of his, ignoring her offer to forget the request entirely. “It is war, and your father fights for my enemy. His men will try to kill my men. He may try to kill me.” He takes a deep breath, and his fingers hesitantly reach out to brush hers. She recalls how she had pulled away when he had touched her cheek and regrets her impulse in rejecting his kindness. Despite the heaviness of his words, she lets him take her hand between his own rough and callused hands. _Callused from fighting. From killing._. If nothing else, she appreciates his honesty. “But I bear your father no ill will, and I will pray that you may see him home when the fighting is done,” he adds, so seriously that she can do nothing but take him upon his word. 

“Why?” she whispers, curious despite herself. This man is such an enigma to her, so difficult to understand that she can scarcely believe that he had been Brandon’s brother. “He fights against you. Why do you bear him no ill will?” 

“My father has always spoken highly of yours,” he answers. “I believe he is a man of honor, and such men will always do what they believe is right. I may disagree with the path that he has chosen, but I respect a man who stands by his morals.” 

Through her tears, her lips quirk up into a trembling smile. “You will make a most unusual lord when this is over, Lord Eddard,” she says quietly. She cannot imagine Brandon speaking so highly of a man fighting against him; Brandon had always been hot-headed and passionate. It had made him easy to love, and it had made him frightening, as well. His brother is a different sort entirely – cool and logical, holding all men to the same code of honor no matter to whom they pledge their loyalty.

Lord Eddard gives her a strange look, and too late, Catelyn realizes how she has misspoken. _For him to be a lord when this is over, my father will have to lose the war. Our house will lose the war,_ she scolds herself. Irritated with her own slip, she pulls her hand back from his. “Perhaps that is to be expected. Lord, battle commander…neither are responsibilities that I thought to take,” he replies, just as quiet as she. “And so please…I am far more comfortable being called Ned.” 

\--

“You are glad of a reason to leave,” Howland Reed says to him, the day before their departure. His leg still aches with each step, yet he hopes it will fare better upon horseback. The maester had urged him to rest for another week, but Ned knows he can leave his troops under the command of Martyn Cassel no longer. Ned had instructed Cassel to have the troops pack camp and prepare to leave for the capital, hoping that the implicit promise of actual fighting would temper any ill will towards their failed campaign. From the walls of Riverrun, Ned can tell the horses are loaded and his men are ready to move on; he does not wish to linger any longer and allow boredom to spread while he further recovers. _And perhaps it shall never be better,_ he admits bitterly; the maester will not say so plainly, but Ned had seen it in his eyes when the man had spoken of cutting into the muscle around his knee. 

“Gods, yes,” Ned replies without hesitation. With Howland, at least, he can be honest. “I will be glad to leave this mess behind me.” He clenches his jaw as he thinks upon Robert’s foolish pride and of the time wasted trying to capture a castle that would prove more trouble than it was worth to hold. _All this time, I could have been looking for Lyanna._ Darkly, he wonders if that had been part of Robert’s plan – if he had wanted Ned occupied so that Robert might be the one to discover Lyanna, the one to swoop in and save her, thus winning her undying affection. _No,_ he scolds himself, guilty over thinking such ill things of his closest, oldest friend. _Robert would never do that. This has been a waste, but Robert ordered it to please me._

“And Lady Catelyn?” Howland asks, a note of amusement creeping into his voice. “Will you be glad to leave her behind, too, my lord?” Howland gazes along the length of the hallways, as though expecting to see the lady in question appear at the mere mention of her name. “You have spent many hours in these very halls with her, if I am not mistaken.” 

Howland is not mistaken; Ned is not sure how it is possible, but it seems the crannogman is rarely mistaken. Yet his gentle teasing makes Ned grit his teeth in irritation. He may have spent hours limping through the halls of Riverrun, Lord Tully’s eldest daughter at his side, but Howland’s insinuations of gentle flirtations and sweet words miss the mark. Instead, Ned remembers Lady Catelyn at his bedside, suspicion in her big blue eyes, calling him an enemy - _her_ enemy. He recalls the pleading in her voice, the way her fingers had gone white when she had gripped his sleeve and begged for her father’s life, while the sunlight streamed in through the high windows and made her hair gleam like copper. 

In truth, he _is_ glad to leave her behind as well. He had been surprised by how much he had liked her. She is different from the ladies he has known before – far too practical and calm to truly remind him of his sister and too serious to resemble the giggling maidens that Robert had favored in the Eyrie. And she reminds him nothing at all of Ashara, Ashara with her dark hair and mysterious smile, Ashara whom Ned could barely speak to, much less understand. 

He finds speaking with Lady Catelyn much easier in comparison – almost too easy, for the hard truths he has to offer her. For that reason, he looks forward to leaving Riverrun. He has nothing to offer her but disappointment and heartache, and that is nearly as painful as the wound in his leg. _She smiled when I spoke of the ship bearing provisions, and when I mentioned her brother and sister,_ he remembers, and he inwardly scoffs at how he clings to such a little, insignificant thing. 

Yet, he thinks some part of him will miss her. Perhaps not Lady Catelyn herself – for all that she is beautiful and honorable and good, she is a stranger to him still. But Brandon tied them together, and Ned cannot look upon her without thinking of his brother and the life that he should have led. It is a bittersweet feeling, as close to his lost family as he can come, and now he shall leave it behind. _I will likely never see her again,_ he thinks grimly. 

Robert’s threats to wed the Tully girls to blacksmiths as an insult to their father, suddenly echo in the back of his mind, and Ned silently vows that those threats will come to naught. Even before, he had disagreed with Robert’s belief that Lord Tully’s girls should pay for his choices, and now, having met them both (however brief and sullen Lady Lysa had been while speaking to him), Ned cannot step aside and let Robert ruin them. They deserve good matches with worthy men. _Gods grant their father is around to make such matches for them,_ he silently prays. Ned has little talent and use for lying, so he had spoken truly when he told Catelyn that he would pray for her father and nothing more. 

Later that afternoon, Howland’s teasing words follow Ned through the main hall of Riverrun and out the gate into the bright sunshine. Winter in the Riverlands is surprisingly mild, especially compared to the frigidness of the north. Even winter in the Eyrie had been harder – the cold wind had blown in off the harbor, and the height had made the air thin and hard to breathe. Riverrun has been so tightly sealed against the siege that it is stuffier and warmer than he ever would have expected. The snow outside has melted away, so Ned finds it far more pleasant to walk by the river to stretch his knee, trying to rely less and less on the walking stick with each passing day. The banners of House Stark still snap in the breeze just beyond the flooded moat; sometimes, when he feels particularly restless, Ned considers running for the camp. But mostly he watches and waits, trusting that his men will obey orders and not attack the castle, especially now that he is within. 

He is saddened to see that Catelyn does not share his confidence when he asks if she would like to join him, despite the credence his invitation lends to Howland’s words. She accepts, however warily, but he notices that she keeps him between her and the army at her gate, and that each rustle of the leaves or snap of a branch makes her tense or jump. Her skittishness fills him with sorrow, and he is about to suggest that they return inside when she takes a deep breath of the fresh air, sinking to the ground to sit with her toes in the water and her face turned up to the sun. “It has been a long time,” she says quietly, simply, and Ned carefully sits beside her, mindful to stretch his bad leg out before him. 

_I’m sorry,_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites the words back. It is a crossroads that he forever finds himself at – enjoying Catelyn’s company, her plain manner of speaking, yet regretting the turmoil he has brought into her life. “We will be gone tomorrow,” he tells her instead, and surprise flickers across her face. Surprise – but not joy, he realizes, and he is absurdly pleased by that fact. 

“Your leg does not look fit for battle,” she points out, and instinctively, he stretches it further, as though to try and disprove her point. He winces at the twinge of pain that shoots up his thigh, and Catelyn’s brow furrows in concern. 

“I know,” he admits. “But we have many days of riding before we rejoin Robert’s camp. I cannot afford to waste any more time. Every day I spend here is a day Lyanna remains lost.” He looks away, glancing along the length of the river, along the path they will follow towards the capital. He would meet Robert along the way, and perhaps Jon – would he find Lyanna, as well? _Where are you, little sister?_

“You ride for King’s Landing?” Catelyn whispers, and Ned is startled from his reverie. 

“Yes,” he answers shortly, plainly, and a cloud passes over Catelyn’s face. 

“This is where Brandon bade me farewell when he rode south,” she murmurs, her eyes far away – in the same place, perhaps, but with a different man. “He promised he would return and that we would soon be wed. And I waited for him, as I wait for my father now. As I’ve always waited.” 

Ned does not answer. He had not seen Brandon since Harrenhal; he had thought to see him again at Brandon’s wedding to the girl sitting beside Ned now. Yet he can easily imagine Brandon’s smile, his easy confidence as he bade his betrothed farewell and rode to his death. 

Catelyn’s fingers land on his arm, and he is reminded of the way she had grasped his sleeve in the hall, when she had begged him to spare her father’s life. There is a part of him that wants to lace his fingers through hers, tying them together physically as certainly as their shared grief does emotionally. “Be careful, my lord,” she says quietly, and while there is not the same desperation in her voice as she had shown while pleading for her father, there is still conviction. “I would not have you suffer the same fate as your brother or father.” 

Ned makes no promises – he tries to never make promises that he cannot keep. But he indulges his earlier desire by taking Catelyn’s hand. No more words are spoken – no more need be spoken between them. They sit in silence, hands clasped, and watch the sun dip below the horizon. 

The next day, the entire household turns out when he and Howland prepare to mount up and depart. The maids, stewards, guards, and stablehands linger within the protective stone walls of Riverrun and eye him with suspicion, as though waiting for him to break his word and order the men to charge the open gate. Their wary glances make Ned bristle. _A Tully is not the only sort with honor,_ he wants to scold, but instead he silently walks through the column they form, his face hard as stone. 

Just on the other side of the gate, with the bridles of Ned’s and Howland’s horses in his hand, awaits the Blackfish. The three Tully children stand at his side. Lady Catelyn is directly at his left, her face composed into an expression of calm courtesy, and little Edmure is next to her, the back of his shirt caught discreetly in his sister’s fist. The boy’s eyes dart from the blue sky to the line of trees to the lush grass growing beside the river, and again Ned is struck by a pang of guilt that this child has not seen sunlight in nearly a moon’s turn because of Ned’s actions. Next to Edmure is Lady Lysa, with red eyes and the same sullen expression she had worn each time Ned had seen her. Brandon had called her a giggly, nervous sort, but that does not seem to fit at all with the silent, sad girl before him. Though Ned had dined with the Blackfish, Catelyn and Edmure while he recovered, the third Tully child had kept to herself. 

Ned nods stiffly at the Blackfish, taking the reins from the older knight’s hand. “I thank you for your maester’s care, Ser Brynden,” he says awkwardly, uncertain what farewells he should give to a man who is still his enemy, and yet did not let Ned die when given the opportunity. 

The Blackfish’s face is stony, and to Ned’s surprise, Catelyn answers for her uncle. “Safe travels, my lords,” she says courteously, looking between Ned and Howland. “I pray that next we meet will be in happier circumstances.” She stands with her back straight and head held high, as though she were the lady of the land – and perhaps, Ned considers, she is used to being so. 

“As do I, my lady,” Ned agrees. When Howland reaches out and kisses the hand that Lady Catelyn proffers, Ned realizes that he should do the same. Her hand is light and smooth when he grasps it, a keen reminder that she is really little more than a girl, for all that Ned has seen her act the lady of Riverrun since his arrival. _A girl caught in the crossfires,_ he thinks grimly, and he vows then that king or no king, Robert would no longer command him to terrorize innocents, to trap maidens within their towers. 

When he mounts, he does not look back upon Riverrun; he expects he will never lay eyes upon it again.


	3. Part 3

Catelyn does not plan to write to Lord Eddard, nor does she think that he will make good on his promise of sending provisions to Riverrun. And so when the ship appears at the Water Gate with its bounty – dried meats, hard cheeses, turnips, carrots, and onions – she feels the need to put quill to parchment and express her gratitude. Her septa, Catelyn thinks, would be proud of her politesse, yet she does not mention the letter to the septa, nor to Lysa, who is still acting so strangely despite the siege being lifted. She especially does not mention it to her uncle, and it is that which gives her the greatest guilt. She has never had to keep secrets from the Blackfish, and try as she might to convince herself that she does not tell him of the letter simply because it is of little consequence, she cannot shake the feeling that she is betraying her uncle and her family with each stroke of her quill. 

She signs her letter only with her first name, leaving aside family names and honorifics, and seals it with a non-descript blob of wax, rather than with the seal of House Tully. There is nothing within that could be found objectionable, yet Catelyn remembers that they are still fighting on opposite sides of a war, regardless of the lingering good will she may harbor for the man who had been Brandon’s brother, the man who had kept his promise to her. When she goes to the sept that afternoon, she lights a candle to the Warrior and prays for her father, his victory and his safe return, but she prays for Eddard Stark, too. Ned, he had said to call him, yet the name sounds awkward even in her mind. 

_Family, duty, honor,_ she tells herself – her father, her family, have decreed that fighting for the crown is the dutiful and honorable course of action. Yet the Targaryens had nearly obliterated Lord Eddard’s family, and she cannot fault him for the path he has chosen in retaliation. Catelyn kneels before the Seven and prays for peace, for an end to the bloodshed. _There has been enough loss,_ she thinks, and she keeps her eyes open, gazing upon the prisms of light that filter in through the stained glass windows. At times, she fears the darkness behind her closed eyelids, and the visions that await her there – of Brandon riding away from Riverrun, towards his death, and of her father following that same path. 

She had only meant to inform Lord Eddard of the ship’s arrival at Riverrun and to thank him for his generosity; she is surprised when a letter arrives in return from him. Her guilt surges with a vengeance when the maester gives it to her still sealed, obviously trusting her with her own correspondence. At times Catelyn wonders if it would be easier if her uncle and Maester Vyman were more suspicious, if they had taken the decision out of her hands and burned the letter before it reached her. But that is a childish thought, and it has been a long time since Catelyn was a child. 

Lord Eddard – Ned, he signs at the bottom – had followed her lead and not sealed his letter with the direwolf of House Stark. Catelyn wonders if that is for her benefit or his own – would his great friend, Robert Baratheon, be as wroth as Catelyn’s father would be at their casual exchange of words? 

The letter brings her greater relief than she had ever expected, greater than she has any right to feel. Despite the anger she had felt during the siege each time she had looked from the windows to see the Stark banners on the horizon, she cannot help but think of him with some measure of fondness. At first she had thought her attachment to him was due to her lingering sorrow over Brandon’s death, but Ned Stark is as different from his brother as the moon is from the sun. When she thinks of him, she remembers the solemnity of his gaze when he had made his promises to her. _And he kept them,_ she marvels. She had told him he would be a rare lord at war’s end, but more and more, Catelyn is certain that he is simply a rare man. 

She reads his letter over and over, until the ink is smudged and the creases in the parchment nearly tear beneath the worrying of her fingers. She used to read Brandon’s letters with such devotion, until she could recite them by heart, and Lysa would tease her. Ned Stark’s words are more distant by far, revealing little of his heart, nothing of the developments in the war. They are anything but romantic, yet Catelyn cannot help but feel bound by the words that lie within them. 

She prays each day for her father’s safe return, most often alone in the silence of the sept, and she continues to pray for Ned Stark, too. 

When her uncle Brynden calls her into her father’s solar, he greets her with a face so grave that Catelyn is sure he has learned of the letters she has sent and received in turn. He looks older than his years, his forehead grooved in worry lines and his eyebrows pinched down in a frown. The denials and explanations well up unbidden upon her tongue, and she thinks of the scrap of parchment that she has taken to keeping beneath her mattress, treating it more as a secret love token than as the mundane message that it is. 

But when she enters, the gaze her uncle turns upon her is so sorrowful that Catelyn loses her breath for a moment. She need not ask what troubles him; it is written all over his features. He did not call for her to scold her for sending thanks to an enemy. She stands just inside the doorway, rooted to the spot, as though the distance between her and her uncle could keep her safe from the truth that she can read in his eyes. 

The Blackfish opens his arms to her. “Come here, little Cat,” he says, his voice rough with grief, and Catelyn’s eyes burn as she fights the urge to cry. 

“Oh, no,” she whispers, even as Uncle Brynden crosses to her and pulls her into his arms. His embrace had once made her feel so safe, so sheltered from the ills of the world, yet it cannot save her from this. The tears spill over, tracking warmly down her face. “Oh, please, no…” 

\--

 _I have made a habit of ending sieges,_ Ned thinks wryly to himself. 

It is better that he is leaving again. He can barely stand to look upon Robert. It had been difficult enough after the Trident, where Robert had slain the Crown Prince. The river had run red with rubies and blood when Robert’s warhammer had crashed through Prince Rhaegar’s chest, and Robert’s howl of victory had drowned out the moans and gasps of the dying men around them. His teeth had gleamed white in an almost obscene grin. The wine had flowed freely that night, the revelry continuing until dawn. Ned had been in no mood to celebrate, but that had not stopped Robert. To Ned, it seems it would have been far more prudent to capture the prince alive, and therefore learn of Lyanna’s whereabouts. At the Trident, Ned had wondered for the first time if Robert had warred more for Lyanna’s sake or for the sake of revenge alone. 

Though Ned had been disconcerted, it was what had greeted them in King’s Landing that had caused the lingering tensions between Robert and him to boil over into an explosive argument. When Ned closes his eyes at night, he still sees the broken bodies of the little Targaryen prince and princess, wrapped in Lannister red and laid before the throne. The words he had told himself – told others – at Riverrun play through his mind, _I did not fight this war to frighten maidens and children._ There had been no honor, no justice in Lord Tywin’s actions, nor those of his kingslaying son. Yet even the nights he is spared from the vision of those slaughtered children, the pleased gleam in Robert’s eye when he had beheld them still haunts Ned’s dreams. In that throne room, Ned had been certain for the first time that Robert’s thirst was for vengeance, not for peace and honor. That realization stretches between them like a moat, one that Ned does not imagine he will ever be able to cross. The loss of Robert hurts as keenly as losing Brandon and his father – Robert had not been his brother in blood, but had been his brother of choice. And now, like the rest of his family, Robert is forever lost to Ned. The way that he had been lost makes the pain even worse. 

Despite Jon Arryn’s pleadings, leaving the capital had been Ned’s only choice. He could not stay there a moment longer, watching Robert pardon lords and knights who had slaughtered women and children. There had still been much to do, much to set right, and even now, Lyanna is still lost to the world. Ned dreams of her most of all, of her frightened grey eyes. He tries to tell her that he has not forsaken her, yet the words catch in his throat so that all he can do is watch as she floats away from him on the breeze, as insubstantial as a ghost. 

_I will comb the Seven Kingdoms,_ Ned tells himself fiercely. _If it takes the rest of my life, I shall find my sister._

Only two tasks delay his journey – he rides first to Storm’s End to relieve the siege there. He had thought that Robert would want to go himself, to see his brother safe. Logically, Ned knows that the new king must secure the capital, that Jon would have urged him to remain and claim his kingdom, yet in his anger Ned cannot help but hold it against Robert. Stannis’s face is hollow and hard, his eyes overlarge and angry in his emaciated face. It makes Ned think of little Edmure Tully, of the boat of provisions he had sent to Riverrun, and of the quiet cruelty of a siege. 

Once the siege has been lifted, it would be easy to ride away and leave the politics of the kingdom behind him, to go north or south in search of Lyanna. He briefly considers riding for Starfall – Lady Ashara’s brother had ridden alongside Rhaegar, yet he had not been with the prince at the Trident. The knights of the Kingsguard seem conspicuously absent, now that their king and prince – as well as their prince’s poor children – are gone. They are not craven men to run and hide in the face of defeat, and so Ned thinks that they must be fulfilling their duties in some other fashion. 

But instead he follows the path of the Trident back to the Riverlands, the very place he had been so glad to leave behind. It is a fool’s errand; the war may be over, but those who are now traitors to the new king have yet to receive their retribution. There is no reason in the world that Ned would be warmly received at RIverrun, but Hoster Tully’s sword is strapped to his horse He had promised Catelyn Tully nothing, yet he still feels as though he has broken his word. Returning the sword to Riverrun is a hollow gesture, one that cannot bring the dead back to life, and yet Ned is determined to see it done. 

The castle is as tightly closed as it had been when Ned and his men had left, the bridge drawn up and the flood gates opened. _As though they are preparing for another siege,_ Ned thinks. Of course, the Blackfish would know of the latest happenings at the Trident and in King’s Landing, and relief runs in the undercurrent of Ned’s guilt – he had feared being not just the bearer of Lord Tully’s sword, but of the news of his demise. 

He waits by the gate, wondering if he should have sent word of his approach. He watches the ramparts closely, suspiciously – waiting here to be received feels so hauntingly familiar that he cannot help but remember the sear of pain as the arrow had pierced his flesh. _Would that it never had,_ Ned wishes. Had he never been brought within the walls of Riverrun, perhaps he would not feel the obligation to return there now. Perhaps he would be able to forget the wrongs he has done here. Yet somehow he doubts it – Ned has always found it extraordinarily difficult to forgive himself. 

Despite arriving unannounced, it is not long before the drawbridge lowers, and a figure emerges upon horseback, riding for the closed gate. That feels startlingly familiar as well, and for a moment Ned wishes for the company of Martyn Cassel or Howland Reed. He had left his men at Storm’s End to rest and recover, taking enough food and drink from the Tyrell camp to feed them and Stannis’s men through three years of winter. Howland had protested Ned’s setting out on this errand alone, and yet it had seemed such a foolish thing to do that Ned could not bring himself to demand others accompany him. A man alone can travel quickly, and this is Robert’s land now – however much innocent bloodshed the win had cost him. 

“Lord Stark,” the Blackfish greets coolly when he comes within sight. Ned is unsurprised – he imagines Ser Brynden has Riverrun carefully guarded and closely observed, and probably knew of his approach long before Ned reached the gate. Perhaps he is the one it is closed against. “This is unexpected. Are you here on behalf of your king?” ‘ _Your king,_ ’ Ned notes – surprisingly neat ambiguity from a man as blunt as Ser Brynden. Ned would have expected such tactful diplomacy from Lady Catelyn, but not from her uncle. 

The Blackfish’s face is hard and grim, his blue eyes as cold as the ice of the Wall. He seems to have aged years in the moons since Ned saw him last, the lines around his mouth and eyes deepening into defined grooves, his hair streaked with more grey than Ned remembers. Ned had arrived alone, yet the Blackfish’s manner is more defensive, more rigid now than it had been when there was an army at the gates. 

“I did not,” Ned replies quietly. “His Grace does not know that I am here.” He does not mention the way that he and Robert had parted; even now, with the war at its end, Ned knows no good could come of sharing such information with the Blackfish. 

Ser Brynden narrows his eyes. “And why are you here, my lord?” he asks. 

“I have something that belongs to you that I would like to see returned,” Ned answers evenly. “Might I come within, Ser Brynden?” He is still leery of lingering at the gate; the scar on his knee throbs at the memory. 

The Blackfish eyes him warily for a tense, silent moment. If the older knight did not seem so worn and tired, Ned would think it a bit of playacting. He had obviously come alone to Riverrun, and even without Ned’s guard behind him, the Blackfish could take him handily in combat without breaking so much as a sweat. “Be quick about it, then,” he gruffly relents, urging his horse backwards so that the gate may slowly open. 

Riverrun is the picture of sobriety. The serving maids and stewards move throughout the castle like silent ghosts, and Ned sees nothing at all of any of Lord Hoster’s children as the Blackfish leads him to the lord’s solar. He sups there, privately, and he begins to suspect that he is purposefully being kept out of sight. It bothers him more than it should, and he tells himself sternly that he came merely to return the sword. He presents it to Ser Brynden, who thanks him gravely. It is over so quickly that it seems foolish to have ridden for days to Riverrun when he is truly needed elsewhere. 

Yet something soft and sad overtakes Ser Brynden’s face when Ned lays Lord Hoster’s sword upon the table. Ned has long heard of the legendary feud between the two brothers, and Lady Catelyn had confirmed such when he had been recuperating, yet the sorrow and pain on the knight’s face is undeniable. “I’m sure he was a stubborn fool right to the very end,” he mutters, and Ned does not know if he should agree or disagree. 

“Either way, it is at an end,” he decides upon saying, and the Blackfish studies him, as though he is seeing him for the first time. 

“I suppose it is,” he agrees, and he stands. “I thank you for this gesture, Lord Stark,” he says, his voice gruff. “The hospitality of Riverrun is yours for the night. I will have Wayn lead you to a guest chamber.” 

The old steward, when he arrives, seems not at all pleased with the task. Yet he has the sort of sour face that suggests to Ned that there is little in life that pleases him. They walk in heavy silence through the quiet corridors of Riverrun. Ned wonders if the new little Lord Edmure is being deliberately kept from sight; the last time Ned had been in Riverrun, it seemed as though he could barely turn the corner without tripping over the restless, over-exuberant boy. At the memory, sympathy wells in his belly – Ned himself had felt incredibly ill-prepared to become a lord, but at least he had been fully grown when that time had come. _Boy lords mean naught but trouble,_ he thinks grimly. 

So lost in thought is he, that he nearly does not notice the woman before him until he nearly knocks her down after turning the corner. “Catelyn!” he exclaims, and immediately curses himself for addressing her so informally in his surprise. “My lady,” he corrects himself, sparing a sidelong glance to see if Wayn noticed his slip. The steward scowls back at him, but it seems no different from Wayn’s normal expression. “I am…” he trails off, uncertain what comfort he could offer her. Ned finds the right words difficult in the best of circumstances, and this meeting is far from the best of circumstances. 

Lady Catelyn looks at him blankly, her expression inscrutable. Her face is as pale as winter snow, her thick auburn hair hanging loosely around her shoulders. She is beautiful in her sorrow, and Ned wants to take her hand to pull her close and run far away from her all at once. “My lord,” she says softly, with no hint of emotion to suggest that she is glad to see him or that she wishes him dead. “I did not know of your coming.” 

Uncomfortable, Ned shifts from foot to foot, well aware of Wayn’s deepening frown, his impatience and irritation. Catelyn notices as well, and with a hint of the courtesy Ned remembers, she turns to the steward. “Please excuse us, Wayn. I would be happy to escort Lord Stark to his rooms and learn of his business in Riverrun.” 

“As you wish, my lady,” Wayn grumbles, and Ned is surprised that he would consent to leaving them alone with one another. Apparently his desire to be free of their stilted conversation had been stronger than his interest in creating a sense of propriety by remaining in their company. He does not even bother glancing back at the pair as he ambles away down the hall and around the corner. 

Uncertainly, Ned offers Catelyn his arm, and dutifully, she takes it. Her fingers barely brush the inside of his elbow, however, offering the illusion of politesse and nothing more. His steps are much steadier than they had been the last time they had walked these halls together, but his tongue feels heavy and useless in his mouth. It would be easier, he thinks, if she would speak first, and give some inclination of her feelings towards him. But instead she walks in stony silence, her eyes focused straight ahead, as though he is not at her side at all. 

He should tell her of his reason for coming. _I wanted to return your father’s sword._ But even in his mind, that sounds too self-congratulatory for the paltry act it is. Catelyn is a noble-born lady; she has no use of house swords. He is sure that she would much prefer he had delivered Lord Tully himself home, alive and whole. Part of him thinks that he should apologize, but he cannot bring himself to beg forgiveness when Lord Tully’s death had been a consequence of war. Ned had broken no promise, told no lie, yet he is left feeling like the most callous of betrayers. 

She releases his arm and fumbles with a key at her belt to unlock the door before them. Too late, he realizes that he does not recognize the corridor in which they stand, that these rooms are different from those he occupied before. Briefly, Ned wonders if he had been regarded with more suspicion then or now, and if the change in quarters has anything to do with how the Tullys view him.

The chambers that Catelyn leads him into are very different on the inside, as well. The first thing Ned notices is the large looking glass and the vanity and stool before it. The baubles upon the tabletop are neatly organized – a small basin of water, a crystal vial, a silver hairbrush, a strand of pearls. In an effort to avoid Catelyn’s eyes, he moves towards the looking glass to examine the artifacts before it more carefully. The vial is a floral blossom water, sweetly fragrant and oddly familiar. _Catelyn,_ he realizes with a start, and he nearly drops the vial in his surprise. _It smells of Catelyn._ But surely, he thinks, she would not bring him to her own chambers? 

Catelyn watches him from across the room, and her silence unnerves him. “Forgive me,” he says, replacing the vial in its spot; the words sound empty to his own ears.

“I am glad to see you well,” she says abruptly, but sincerely, and his heart seizes in his chest. 

“I am…” he trails off, uncertain how to proceed. He wishes he had Brandon’s confidence or Benjen’s geniality. He wishes that for once, he could grasp what always came so easily to his siblings – the ability to win people with their words. “I am sorry for your loss, my lady.” 

“My loss,” she echoes, as though she is trying the taste of the words on her lips. She frowns, but she seems more puzzled than annoyed. He can only see her profile as she turns to the window, running her fingers along the blue curtains. The last rays of the setting sun filter in through the panes of glass, illuminating the weary circles between her eyes, the taut muscles of her neck. “Is that why you are here?” 

Ned swallows, curling his hands into fists. It seems a wiser thing to do, rather than try and touch her. “Yes,” he answers honestly. 

“Did you kill him? Was it you?” she demands, turning to face him in a whirl. Her blue eyes are bright with unshed tears, and her hands, as they grasp the folds of her gown, tremble like little birds. She is holding herself together by a thread, balancing on the edge of his answer. Ned wonders what she would prefer to hear – would it be easier for her to have someone to blame? Or would she feel betrayed if he had dealt the killing blow when she had spared Ned after his injury in the name of Brandon’s memory?

In the end, it does not truly matter what she had hoped. Ned is not a man to make a habit of lying, and so the honest truth is all that he has to offer her. “No, my lady,” he answers gently. “I did not know the man who dealt the killing blow.” _And if I had known him, I would have no censure for him,_ he thinks grimly to himself. _This is the way of war._ He had promised Catelyn that he would pray for her father to come home to her, and so he had. He could offer nothing more. 

He does not give voice to these thoughts. Catelyn has suffered as much loss as Ned has; he need not explain to her the nature of war.

Catelyn nods curtly at him, stifling a cry in her throat as she blinks rapidly. She turns her face away again to glance out the window at the meandering river below, but that is not enough to hide the sight of her tears spilling forth, sliding down her cheeks as her shoulders shake with suppressed sobs. Despite her grief, she holds her head high, her fingers grasping the sill as though that will keep her tethered and make her strong. At the sight of her pain, he is nearly overcome with the urge to hold her, to let her weep on his shoulder, to bring her comfort and peace. When word had come of Brandon’s death and his father’s, Robert had sat with Ned all through the night, uncharacteristically silent in his support. To whom would Lady Catelyn have to turn in the midst of being strong for the sake of her siblings and her uncle? 

“Catelyn…” he murmurs, closing the distance between them and reaching out to lay a hand upon her shoulder. Her name flows easily from his lips this time, free of any honorific just as it had been in her writing. She flinches at his touch, as though he has startled her, and she drops her chin so that her loose red hair falls like a curtain between them. “I am truly sorry, my lady. Believe me…I know how deeply the loss cuts.” 

She turns her gaze back to him then, a brief flicker of understanding in her eyes as she seems to recall that this war has left them in similar states – parentless, forced to carry the weight of their house’s honor upon their shoulders, expected to mend their broken families. Her face is damp from the tracks of her tears, and Ned cannot help but reach out and cup her cheek in his palm, wiping the wetness away with his thumb as one might do for a child. To his surprise, she leans into his touch, her fingers wrapping around his wrist as though to hold him in place. “What is to happen to us, now that the war is over and we have lost? What will happen to Edmure?” she whispers, and Ned hates that she must look to the future with fear. 

“Nothing,” Ned answers fiercely, and he grasps her shoulders, giving her a little shake to emphasize his point. “Nothing will happen to your family. I promise you, Catelyn.” It is a vow he swears not only to her, but to himself, as well. He is sure that Robert is still flush with his victory at the Trident, and therefore currently too distracted to think of punishment for the Tullys or any other house that fought against them. And now when the matter does arise, Ned must urge him to stand down, to be lenient and forgiving. _Let there be an end,_ he will tell Robert, and perhaps then they will start to stitch the kingdom back together, offering peace rather than bloodshed. Perhaps that would be enough to reconcile them, enough to convince Ned that Robert is still the man that he has always thought him to be. And if that approach failed to sway Robert, Ned would admit that he had made a promise to a fair maiden. Robert is a romantic at heart, and though he would jape about it until the end of their days, he would acquiesce to Ned’s request. 

“Why would you help us?” Catelyn asks warily. Her world-weary suspicion makes him angry and sad all at once. There are a thousand reasons that he should try to help her, one for each of the moments they spent together after his injury. And there is Brandon, of course, the shadow that she pointed out whenever Ned wondered why she would treat her enemy with such tender care while he had been regaining his strength in Riverrun. Compassion itself has never seemed reason enough to either of them, and to Ned, that is a pity. 

“Why do you think I fought this war?” he demands, gripping her shoulders hard. “To win lands and glory and honors? To hurt people like you? Gods, Catelyn, I just wanted to bring my sister home again, and that is still left undone. We have both had more than our share of grief, and I will spare you whatever further pain I can.” 

His outburst stuns her into silence, but her tears start anew, and he can feel her tremble beneath his hands. Her body sways just slightly into his, with a tiny rock forward from her heels, and that is enough for him to succumb to his earlier desire to wrap his arms around her and draw her against him. 

He will never remember which of them initiated the kiss. His nose brushes the crown of her head, resting against that bright red hair, and then her face is tipping up to him, and he is bending down. 

Despite growing up with Robert Baratheon, Ned needs barely more than a hand to count the number of ladies he has kissed in his life. There had been Myra, the serving maid at the Eyrie, who had been sweet and cheeky while playing at kisses with Robert and him both, until Lord Arryn had found out and threatened to beat them both black and blue. There had been the ladies in the town’s brothel, when he and Robert would descend into the Vale – women who had giggled at his fumbling uncertainty and shown him what to do. Yet there had not been many of them, and he could still recall them by name – Janyce, Deana, Ebba, Jeyne. And of course, there had been Ashara, who had danced with him, her eyes flickering in the candlelight. Her kiss that night had tasted of blood oranges, of secrets that he never could divulge. 

Catelyn’s lips taste of salt, from the tears that have landed and dried there. Her touch is as delicate and elusive as a whisper on the wind, her lips barely brushing his while her fingers ghost along the breadth of his back. She is still shaking in his arms, and he pulls her closer, holds her tighter, as though he could keep her together that way. She sighs, her lips parting against his as the rigidity in her back melts away. 

There is a voice in the back of Ned’s mind, telling him that he should stop this, that he has already gone too far. But when he begins to pull away, Catelyn utters a soft cry of protest, her nails digging for purchase in his biceps. Her bottom lip trembles when he draws it between his lips, and when he slides his mouth to her neck, he can feel her pulse fluttering wildly there – from nerves or from desire, he knows not. 

“My lady,” he murmurs against her shoulder when her hands land unsurely on his belt. He is used to following the lead of an experienced woman, one confident in her own abilities and secure in the knowledge of what she wants. For the first time since he has known her, Catelyn seems lost, adrift in a sea of sorrow. He had so admired her conviction, her boldness and bravery when she had looked him in the eyes and told him her thoughts – even when she did not think much of him at all. Now she is floating without a tether, and though he knows her father’s death was no fault of his own, Ned cannot help but feel responsible. 

He wants to save her, from her grief and the bleakness of the future ahead of her. He does not want to fail her, when he failed his father and brothers, failed his sister, failed Robert and Jon as well. He still barely knows her and does not love her, but still he wants her, not merely out of desire but for the comfort of knowing that he is not alone, and neither is she. 

It is entirely inelegant, the way he half-carries her to the bed, dropping her to the feather mattress and letting her pull him down with her. He barely realizes that he has slipped his hand beneath her skirts, between her legs, until she gasps against his mouth, arching herself into his touch. At the sound she makes, he starts to draw his hand away, suddenly ashamed of himself. “I should not,” he whispers, but she catches his wrist, wrapping her long, slender fingers around it. 

“Please,” she says plaintively, and her voice catches. Her blue eyes are overly bright from the tears she has shed, and instinctively, he leans in to kiss the drops that are still clinging to her lashes. Briefly, he wonders if he had been too intimate for what little there is between them, and then he realizes what a ridiculous notion that is given the position they find themselves in now. “I need to forget…just for a little while. Just for one night.” 

In the back of his mind, Ned knows that he cannot, will not, bring her peace this way. He should stop it, should leave Riverrun that very night and never speak of these stolen moments again. Yet he is even more certain that he cannot bring her father back, cannot bring Brandon back, cannot make Robert forget on which side of the war the Tullys had fought. There is so little he can offer her, and so much he wishes he could give. And if she wants him, he is hers, poor substitute that he is for his charismatic brother. It is Brandon who deserves a beautiful, vibrant woman like Catelyn in his arms; that she has to settle for Ned instead feels like yet another injustice that is being heaped upon her. 

She sits up and together they work on the laces at the front of her gown. Ned’s fingers feel thick and clumsy as they trip over her skin, as they settle into the valley between her breasts. Her skin is smooth and pale as the winter moon, and he feels plain and dull next to her loveliness, like clay next to crystal. Brandon, Ned is sure, would have known what to do, what to say to bring her comfort. Brandon would have known the best way to touch her. “You don’t want me,” he tells her, his voice a low rumble as his hands hesitate at the tops of her breasts. 

“I do,” Catelyn replies with a hint of pleading. As though to illustrate her point, she shrugs her shoulders free of her gown so that it falls to her waist. 

She doesn’t – he knows she doesn’t, that this has little to do with him at all. But her words are reassurance enough that she does not wish his brother in his place, and that gives him the courage to press forward. 

They are quick, and for that, Ned is torn between disappointment and relief. He thinks he could spend forever in her bed and still not have his fill of her touch and taste. Yet had they lingered longer, Ned is sure that his father’s disapproving words would start echoing in his mind. Even now, Ned could almost hear the sound scolding Rickard Stark had given Brandon when the heir of Winterfell had been discovered tussling with a scullery maid. His father would be horrified at the liberties Ned is taking now, and yet that is not enough to stop him. 

Catelyn lets out a soft squeak of pain when he pushes inside her, her leg tightening over his hip and her nails cutting sharply into his back, to hold him in place, as though she knew that he would instinctively try to draw away. “It’s all right,” she gasps, even as tears of discomfort well up in her eyes, twisting like a dagger into Ned’s heart. 

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he tells her hollowly, and the truth of that statement stretches far past this bed and their embrace. There has been so much in this war that Ned has not wanted, things that will haunt him in his dreams for years to come. It had all sounded so simple when they were planning in Jon Arryn’s solar, and yet the crack their rebellion has wrought upon the realm have stretched further and deeper than Ned ever imagined. 

Sympathy spreads across Catelyn’s face then, and she reaches up to touch his cheek. “I know,” she murmurs, and Ned hates that _she_ is comforting _him_ , when it is supposed to be the other way around. He bends to kiss her again, closing his eyes to surrender himself to the taste and scent and feel of her, rather than to the intermingled grief and pity in her eyes. 

It is easy to lose himself that way, in the soft curves of her body, with the warmth of her all around him. Winter may run through his veins, but he thinks he could gladly fall into the soothing heat of her and never again emerge. Even so, he tries to be slow, to be gentle, but it is difficult when she clings to his back and urges him on, her face an odd mixture of discomfort and determination. 

He realizes too late that he should pull away before spending – he has never been with a maiden before, so has never had to take such matters into his consideration. When the damage is done, Ned rolls to his back and pulls her against him, cradling her head against his chest. He tells himself it is an act of comfort. Though that is undeniably true, the greater reason is that he does not want to see the disappointment on her face, the strange emptiness when she discovers that what they have done has not taken her pain away. Catelyn’s shuddering breath is hot against his skin, but her tears have dried, and she lets him hold her. 

His exhaustion catches up to him before his guilt can, and he falls asleep before he realizes the true gravity of what he has done. 

\--

Catelyn is warm when she awakens. 

For a precious few moments, that warmth is all that she knows. She lingers in the space between sleep and consciousness, her mind blissfully empty of all worries and hurts. 

But then, slowly, it returns to her – the letter from Bracken at the Trident, the pain in her uncle’s face, the tears she had cried on Ned’s shoulder when he had brought her father’s sword back to Riverrun. 

_Ned._ When she thinks of him, the remnants of the night before start seeping into her consciousness. As she remembers, she realizes that his arm is around her, holding her close, and his chest is pillowing her head. She pulls back to study his sleeping face, and at the movement she becomes aware of the dull, throbbing ache between her legs. As she sits back on her knees on the feather mattress, she spots the tiny smear of her maiden’s blood on the white sheets, a vivid banner declaring to the world what she has done. 

She should be devastated. _Ruined,_ she tells herself numbly, testing the weight of the words in her mind. _I am ruined._ Though her maidenhead is not the prize it once would have been – she is fairly sure that she had few prospects even before the night past. She is the daughter of a fallen lord on the losing side of the war. She is nearly twenty; soon the first bloom of youth will be behind her. She is no longer the young maiden destined for a great match, meant to be the lady of Winterfell. If she is lucky, her family will be spared by the new king, and once the dust of battle settles, her uncle would try to find someone willing to have her, someone lowborn enough that the king would allow a traitor’s daughter to wed him. _A Frey son, perhaps._ At least her uncle would never consent to giving her to old Lord Walder himself, who chooses younger brides with each consecutive wedding. And even a Frey son would be preferable to the alternative – being lumped in with the spoils of war, used and abused as the new king may wish as punishment for her father’s loyalties. _Ned Stark did not ruin me,_ Catelyn thinks, still watching the man asleep in her bed. _This war has left me spoiled already._

Her legs heavy as lead, she climbs from the bed and crosses to the small table by her window, where a basin of water is set. Her sex is sensitive to the touch as she washes between her legs. Catelyn welcomes the discomfort. It is good to feel anything, even a sharp pain – it cuts through the heavy fog of her grief and misery like a knife. Perhaps that is why she had allowed herself to fall into the strength of his embrace and the warmth of his kiss. They are tied together by the losses that they have both suffered, and she had clung to that connection like a lifeline. It had been a blessed relief, to allow herself to let go for once. She is so used to staying strong – for her siblings, for her uncle, for the people of Riverrun – that she could not resist the temptation of his comfort. 

Catelyn turns back to the bed and startles to see him awake, watching her. The cloth she had been using slips from her fingers in her shock, and instinctively her hands flutter to try and cover herself, to preserve her modesty. _Modesty,_ she thinks wryly. _It is too late for that. What he must think of me._ To her surprise, that bothers her more than the foolishness of her actions – that he might think less of her. For some reason, it matters what he thinks. 

For a long moment, neither of them speaks. The air is thick with tension, with consequences and indecision. Ned seems to want to look at her and to avert his eyes all at once, so his gaze darts nervously about her bedchamber. Finally, he wets his lips and clears his throat. “You are so beautiful,” he tells her softly, his voice hoarse. 

She had expected apologies and excuses, and so the raw honesty and reverence in his voice catches her off guard. All she can do is smile weakly, murmuring her thanks as she reaches for her dressing gown – she always remembers her courtesies, even in circumstances such as these. His eyes drop to the sheets, with the smear of blood staining them, and Catelyn can see his face blanch white, his jaw tighten as he realizes what it means. “My lady,” he says, nearly breathless in his guilt. “I am sorry.” 

“It does not matter,” she replies dully. Though he is still sitting there with a sheet covering his nakedness from the waist down, she moves to start stripping the bed of the evidence. Catelyn would not have her maid discover what she has done. 

Ned catches her wrist, stilling her motion. “I took advantage of your sorrow,” he says, his normally expressionless face the picture of devastation. “I have wronged you most gravely.” The turmoil in his eyes irritates her – he is painting himself as the villain in his mind, she can tell, and Catelyn despises being pitied. 

“I was willing,” she reminds him, unable to keep the clip of annoyance from her voice. “You did not force me. I wanted to…” she trails off, looking away from him, equally unwilling to verbalize what she had been seeking the night before, and unsure of what she had even hoped for. She had known even then that his embrace would not truly take away her pain or soothe her sorrow. She had just wanted to forget for a little while, to feel something different – something new. To fly in the face of duty for the first time in her life, for duty had not served her father well in the end. “Please get up so I can take away the sheet,” she requests softly. Slowly, as though he is moving through a dream, Ned obeys. 

The fire in the hearth has long burnt away to embers, and she cannot very well call for a maid to stoke it again. Catelyn shivers as she crosses the cold flagstones of her chamber with the sheet bundled in her arms. She begins trying to relight the flame with clumsy hands, ones unused to such menial work. 

“Let me,” Ned says in that soft, somber voice of his, and she startles to find him standing right behind her. Gently, he pulls the poker from her fingers, prodding at the fire until it has crackled to life once more. 

“Thank you,” Catelyn tells him, distracted as she begins to rip the soiled sheet into strips, to feed them into the flames. The linen curls and smokes, snaking around the logs before slowly disintegrating into ash, as though it never existed.

“What shall we do from here?” Ned murmurs. _‘We,’,_ Catelyn thinks, _he said ‘we’_. Foolishly, she likes the sound of it, as though there is a ‘we’ to have, and their lives will continue to intersect. But practically, she knows that he will break his fast and ride away, and it will not take long for him to leave his guilt behind. He is a good man, an honest man, but in the end, he can know nothing of what a moment of weakness might cost a woman.

“We will speak of it to no one,” she replies. “And I…will think of something.” It seems impossible that she should keep such a secret from her uncle. How could she let him promise the hand of Hoster Tully’s pristine maiden daughter, knowing that her husband would then discover her soiled? Yet it is even more inconceivable that she should tell him what she has done and see his eyes cloud over in disappointment and disbelief. 

“I would wed you, if you wished it.” Ned’s voice is so quiet that Catelyn is sure that she has misheard him. She turns to face him, her brow furrowing as she tries to process what she thinks he has said to her. 

“What?” 

“I would wed you,” Ned repeats, his voice louder and more certain this time, a resolute expression spreading across his features. “Our fathers thought it a good match, once.” 

Catelyn cannot help but smile wanly. “That was before,” she reminds him. “You could certainly make a more advantageous match now than the daughter of a dead traitor.” The words taste like poison on her lips, laced with the bitterness that she has tried so hard to keep at bay. It sickens her to speak of her father so, and she touches her lips lightly, as though she could wipe away the sourness lingering there from her words. 

“I don’t care about advantage,” Ned replies, gazing at her strangely, as though he does not understand her. “I care about what is right.” 

“I do not need your pity,” she snaps instinctively, wrapping her arms defensively around herself. “Nor your charity.” 

“It is neither pity nor charity,” Ned protests, cupping her elbow to turn her body towards him, his dark grey eyes almost painfully earnest. “It is what my father wished. It is a way to keep your family safe. Robert would do nothing to hurt me or mine.” 

Catelyn hesitates at that line of argument. She may hate the thought that he would make such an offer out of guilt and pity, but it is hard to refuse the opportunity to protect the family that remained to her –her uncle and her siblings. It would be selfish of her to endanger them for her own foolish pride, especially when it follows on the heels of her recklessness. “And you would speak for me? For Edmure?” she asks, her voice wavering slightly. 

His hand slides from her elbow, and he reaches up to gently slide his fingers along the length of her loose red hair, tucking an errant stand behind her ear. “You would be my wife. I would always honor you as such,” he promises, his voice and expression gentle. It makes her want to trust, to believe. It makes her want to relent. 

“Your king would not approve,” she whispers, but she tips her face against his palm, and he raises his other hand in response, cupping her face softly. 

Ned’s face darkens unexpectedly, though his touch grows no less soft. “There are things he has done of which I do not approve, as well. He will come to terms,” he says stonily. Instinctively, Catelyn shivers at the sudden coldness that has overcome him, and she hopes that such iciness will never be directed towards her. Yet his reaction does much to assure her of his conviction – standing before her, he seems like an unmovable mountain, and it is easy to believe that he will stand by his word and by her. 

“Then let us speak to my uncle,” she says softly, and as quickly as it had appeared, his hard anger is gone, dissipated like the morning fog. His face splits into a smile, and the effect is the same as the sun coming out from behind the clouds, warming her from the inside out. Briefly, she wonders how she ever thought him cruel-looking, or even plain. His smile is such a thing of beauty that she cannot help but to smile back at him. 

Despite Ned’s optimism that the king would accustom himself to the match, there is a silent understanding of the need for secrecy and speed. They are wed that very evening, while the setting sun pours through the glass windows of the sept, scattering prisms of color all across the floor. The light illuminates her uncle’s scowling face, catching in the grooves that time and worry have wrought there, transforming him into something dark and unfamiliar. He had been less than pleased, as Catelyn had predicted, and she suspects that her uncle would rather have run Ned through on the very sword he had returned than give his blessing to this union. Catelyn cannot help but wonder what her father would have thought. She thinks he would have been pleased at this overture – they had chosen the losing side in the war, yet his daughter will be the lady of Winterfell regardless. But perhaps she only tells herself that Lord Tully would have been glad to assuage her own guilt. 

It is a quiet, private affair, with only Lysa attending her and Uncle Brynden standing as their witness. Lysa had also been sullen and sour while helping Catelyn dress, pulling too sharply on the laces of her light blue gown and practically yanking the silver hairbrush through Catelyn’s thick hair. When Catelyn had rebuked her and pulled away, tears had sprung to Lysa’s blue eyes. “It isn’t fair,” she had said plaintively, and suddenly, Catelyn had been overcome by a fresh wave of guilt. She had considered what this marriage would mean for her, would mean for Edmure, but she had not thought of what it would mean to leave Lysa alone with whatever poor prospects Uncle Brynden could scrounge up for her. Catelyn had silently vowed that she would find some way to use her new position to aid her sister as well. 

Ned had of course brought no marriage cloak to Riverrun, so his grey traveling cloak must suffice for the ceremony. It is dusty from the road, and the direwolf stitched over the breast is frayed. Her maiden cloak had been made long ago in anticipation of her wedding to Brandon, and it is immaculate as a result. A wave of sorrow washes over Catelyn as her uncle removes the cloak from her shoulders, standing in the place of her father, and again she wonders what Hoster Tully might say of this hastily arranged match. Ned’s hands are gentle when he clasps his cloak around her, and he lingers for a moment longer than necessary when he lifts her hair from where it has caught beneath the fabric. 

There is no grand feast with well-wishers, no music, and there is to be no bedding. Her uncle seats them at the high table as though they have had a true wedding, but Catelyn suspects it is more to assure that the household sees that the match has been made, rather than as any nod to tradition. The Blackfish may disapprove of this match and the way it came about, but Catelyn knows him well enough to understand that he will see it set in stone now. The serving maids frown and whisper as they bring their meals and eye Catelyn with sympathy. _They think I am being forced,_ she realizes suddenly. _They think that this is part of the punishment for our house._ How odd it is that taking Ned into her bed is the single time she had forgotten her duty, cast her reason aside and acted for her own selfish purposes, yet everyone behaves as though her choice has been taken away. _There is never truly a choice for a woman,_ she thinks grimly, and she barely touches her meal. 

For all that their marriage is hastily made, it still must be consummated. If Catelyn had thought that the lack of a bedding or their actions the night before would make her less nervous, she would have been mistaken. 

Her room is dark and cool. For a moment, Catelyn stands on the threshold and tries to imagine how it would look had she been properly wedded. There should be a hundred lit candles upon her mantle, fresh new linens upon the feather mattress, sweet rushes upon the floor, and a flagon of wine for them to share. There is not a soul in Riverrun celebrating this union, so perhaps leaving her room untouched is meant to be a show of solidarity – instead, it leaves Catelyn feeling sad and alone. 

She lights the candles herself, casting her chambers in a soft glow. Hesitantly, Ned touches her shoulders, his fingers ghosting over the laces of her gown. “May I?” he asks quietly, and the tentativeness in his voice surprises her. He is her husband now, however hastily and poorly they were wed, and thus she belongs to him – everything she is and has. Yet the softness in his voice tells her that she could send him away, if she wished it, that she could order him to never touch her again and he would accept a chaste marriage as the price he must pay for dishonoring her. She had once suspected that his hard face was a reflection of cruelty within, but now she is certain that there is a sweet heart beneath that solemn exterior. 

She does not want to send him away. 

“Yes,” she replies softly, and he starts working carefully at the laces of her gown. The night before, they had both tugged at her simple dress, giving little thought to the integrity of the laces or fabric. The gown she wears tonight had been made long ago, embroidered with grey thread at the hem with a thousand perfect stitches and hung in her wardrobe to await the day Brandon Stark claimed his bride – it deserves careful handling. 

Ned’s fingers trail along the nape of her neck and the knobs of her spine as the laces are loosened. His touch is gentle but his skin is rough and callused from battle, from fighting nameless and faceless men. Men who had wives, children, _daughters…._ Catelyn is not so naïve that she does not know the nature of war, but she shivers all the same. 

“I know this is not what you wish,” Ned says, his voice a low timbre laced with melancholy, as though he can read her thoughts, and Catelyn’s heart breaks for him. She has been lost in her sorrow, but she is still home, surrounded by those who love her. Ned Stark may have been on the side that won the war, but he is still leagues from home and is still without his sister. 

“Oh, Ned,” she answers softly, turning to face him. His nickname flows more easily in her mind and from her quill than it does from her lips, but his eyes brighten at her use of it. She cups his cheek lightly, his beard bristling against her fingertips. She does not know how to answer him. In truth, this is far from what she wishes – she wants her father home, healthy and whole. She wants an end to the fighting. She wants time and choices. There are few maidens who would wish for a clandestine marriage, made to prevent their disgrace. Yet there are far worse fates than being the wife of the lord of Winterfell, the wife of this stoic, honorable northman. But even in her mind, those words sound insulting rather than assuring, and so rather than voice them, Catelyn kisses Ned instead, rising on tiptoes to reach his mouth. 

Their kiss is slower and softer than the night before, and she is hyperaware of the brush of his beard against her cheek, of the warm weight of his hands on her back, urging her closer. When last they stood in this room, she had been awash in grief, desperately seeking a tether to keep her from flying apart in a thousand directions. She had found that brief solace in the fierceness of his embrace, yet it had all happened so quickly that she can recall little of the act itself. Tonight, she takes the time to note the hard planes of his body and the way his mouth tastes. 

Tonight, they are led more by desire than by grief, despite the fact that their wanting is still tinged more with desperation than passion. She lets Ned carry her to the bed, and when his fingers interlock with hers as he lowers her to the mattress, she holds tight to his hands. “All will be well,” Catelyn tells him, trying to convince them both. 

She is still sore from the night before, and thus uncomfortable when he slides inside her, even with the care he has taken to caress her into readiness. Despite the discomfort, something in her heart opens to him in response to the way he holds her close, and the way he presses his face against the fall of her auburn hair, breathing deeply of the scent there. With their bodies intertwined, it is difficult to tell where she ends and he begins, and nearly impossible to decipher their heartbeats from one another. Catelyn closes her eyes and embraces the strange, comforting closeness, nuzzling her nose against his neck and feeling his pulse quicken in response. 

Ned murmurs her name against her lips when he comes, and then he hesitates, seemingly on the verge of saying something more. He cups her cheek, pressing his forehead against hers, and there is something wonderfully comforting about the warmth of his breath against her cheek, the reminder of his presence. What lies between them is too raw and new, too touched by sorrow to be given voice, and so Catelyn cannot help but be relieved when Ned chooses the familiar path of remaining silent. “Stay here,” she murmurs instead, slipping her leg between his. 

He stays with her that night and two more after. And then, like all of her men, Ned Stark rides away from her.


	4. Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note - because I am TERRIBLE with deadlines, this last part is unbeta'd, as I finished it oh, yesterday. XD So please forgive the extra mistakes that I am certain are present!

Ned’s letter reaches Robert in King’s Landing before Ned himself does. He need only look upon the devastation on Robert’s face to know that he has read the news of how Ned found his sister at the Tower of Joy. Much has changed since last they parted in anger, but when Robert reaches out to embrace him, Ned feels all the strife between them melt away. Yet when Robert whispers, his voice choked with grief, “Would that I could kill the bastard again, kill him a thousand times, for what he has done,” Ned knows he has done the right thing in keeping what else he found with Lyanna a secret. 

“I heard there was a babe in your party,” Robert asks, his voice edged with suspicion as his eyes wander over Ned’s men. His expression is inscrutable, and Ned is reminded of the stone face he had turned down upon the bodies of Rhaegar’s children. 

“My natural son,” Ned says, testing the words on his lips. “I have sent him along to Winterfell.” 

He is certain that Robert will not believe him, for Ned knows that he is not a skilled liar. Yet perhaps he has underestimated how desperately Robert would want to believe such a tale. Robert roars with laughter through his tears, and slaps Ned on the back, calling him a rouge. 

They dine privately that night with Jon Arryn in the king’s chambers, after Ned sees his men instilled in comfortable quarters. No one seems to notice that Lord Reed is not among the men come to the capital – Ned could trust no other with the delicate task of escorting the babe and his wet nurse to Winterfell. _Jon,_ Ned thinks to himself, as he looks across the table at the man who had been like a father to him, the man who had waged a war to protect them and seems to have aged twenty years in the process. _Jon would be a good name for the lad._

Lyanna had wrought promises from Ned’s lips, but she had faltered when Ned had asked her if she had named the babe. Rhaegar had expected a Visenya, she had told Ned, and so they had no boy names at their disposal. _Call him Brandon, and teach him to be a more cautious man than our dear fool of a brother,_ Lyanna had whispered, tears spilling down her white face, and yet Ned finds the loss is still too raw for such sentiments. Jon, he would call the boy – Jon for a man with honor, a man of principle, a man _alive_. 

They eat in heavy, weary silence. Ned has no love of battle, the way that Robert does, and yet even he had not expected to feel so old and tired at war’s end. Robert’s normal bravado has been sapped from him, and he rips his meat furiously with his teeth while drinking as though his wine cup has no bottom. When he finally looks up at Ned with red-rimmed eyes, his expression is lost. “I need your help, Ned,” Robert says, so forlornly that Ned nearly agrees without hearing what is being asked of him – anything to avoid more pain, more sorrow, more loss. 

“Lord Tywin has an eye to making his daughter a queen,” Robert continues in a low hiss. “She is said to be a beauty, Ned, truly – but I swore that I would have your sister or none at all. You must wed Lady Cersei before they learn of Lyanna…” Here, Robert’s voice cracks, and he blinks rapidly to keep the sudden well of tears in his eyes at bay. “Before they learn of Lyanna’s fate,” he manages. “Do this for me, Ned. Even Lannister would see the merit in the offer. And you could do worse – she is young and fair and will bring all the riches of Casterly Rock to you. We’ll have you wedded and bedded before…before they hear…” Robert gulps for air before lifting his goblet and drinking deep. 

The pause during which Robert swallows his sorrow gives Ned a moment to think. He had not expected to walk into a marriage proposition, nor had he wished to confess about his bride in Riverrun under duress. He did not think Robert would be pleased in the best of circumstances, and now he is certain to be even less so. Briefly, Ned wonders what Robert would have thought if Ned had done such a thing back in the Eyrie, before the war changed the world. Ned had been but a second son back then; his marriage had been of little consequence. Even his own father had yet to make arrangements for him. Ned thinks that Robert likely would have been amused. Yet, were Ned still the second son of Winterfell, Catelyn would be wed to Brandon by now. She had been born to be the lady of Winterfell, yet he had not been born to be its lord. 

But the lord he is, and now Robert is looking at him expectantly, waiting for his consent. “I cannot,” Ned confesses, and immediately, Robert’s face darkens. 

“You will not do this for me?” he demands, his fists curling until his knuckles turn white, his grief melting easily to rage. “Is this about the damned dragonspawn again? Do you seek to punish me further? Have the gods not punished me enough, Stark? I ask you as my friend to wed the Lannister girl, but I could demand it of you as your king!” 

“You misunderstand me,” Ned answers evenly. “It is not that I _will_ not do so, but that I _cannot_.” With a deep breath, he speaks plainly. “I have already wed.” 

The words hang heavy in the air between them. Jon raises his eyebrows, and looks at Ned as though he is some unfamiliar creature. Ned cannot blame him – he has always been the steady, dutiful one, not prone to hasty decisions or secrets. 

“You are _wed_?” Robert spits, as though the words are poison on his tongue. “To _whom?_ ” 

“Lady Catelyn Tully,” Ned answers honestly, and Robert stares at him, mouth agape with surprise – whatever name he had been expecting, evidently it had not been that one. 

“ _Tully_?” Robert growls, with more venom than Ned has heard him use in reference to any loyalist house, with the exception of Targaryen. Jon Arryn has counseled him to show mercy, and Robert is inclined to it. He cares not about Martell nor Tyrell nor Greyjoy, he admires bravery and conviction which allows him to see the value in pardoning men like Ser Barristan Selmy. Robert had made japes when Hoster Tully had refused Ned’s suit, but they had been not made in malice. He had claimed he would wed Catelyn and her sister to butchers and stable hands, but truly, Ned suspects he has forgotten about them entirely until this very moment. But now, a Tully stands between Robert and what he truly wants – Ned’s compliance – and he will despise her for it. “The Tullys stood with the foul villain that kidnapped your sister! The bastard that raped and murdered her! You dare spit on Lyanna’s memory by wedding a _Tully?_ ” 

“This is nothing to do with Lyanna,” Ned seethes. Just that morning, they had embraced as brothers, grieving their mutual loss, but now the anger is back, like a freshly stitched wound ripped open again. The rage pumps through Ned’s veins, pulsing in beat with his heart, at the mere thought that Robert would seek to use his sister against him, would dangle her before Ned to shame him. Robert would never know what Ned has sacrificed for Lyanna, and if he believed that Lyanna would be shamed by the match Ned has made, Robert did not truly know his sister at all. Their time together in Lyanna’s final moments had been too brief to share all that had transpired, but Ned knows his sister well enough to know that she would have been glad and proud of Ned choosing his own path. _Perhaps we are not so different in that,_ Ned wonders, and it is a strange musing – he has always loved his sister fiercely, but thought them to be as different as the sun and the moon. 

“Is she your bastard’s mother?” Robert demands. “Is that why you wed her?” 

“What?” Ned exclaims, startled from his thoughts at the question. He had not thought of naming a mother for the babe traveling to Winterfell – he had been a fool to think no one would ask. He had certainly not thought that Robert would assume it to be Catelyn. What he would tell Catelyn herself of the babe, he could not yet even fathom. He has shamed his wife enough, dishonored her by taking her maidenhead; he could not lay this at her feet, as well. “Of course she is not!” 

“She must be!” Robert exclaims, pounding his fist on the table, his eyes blazing. “I thought it a strange thing, the honorable Ned Stark fathering a bastard. I tell you to take their castle and instead you take a bride. Oh, you’re good enough for Hoster Tully’s precious girl now that they’ve lost a war!” 

“Peace, Robert,” Jon interjects, standing and holding out a beseeching hand to each of his wards. It is a stature so similar to the one he would take in their youth, the few times Ned and Robert had gotten into fierce arguments, that Ned cannot help but see anew how much the war has aged Jon since those days. “Hoster Tully is dead, and his heir is just a lad. This may be a good way to bring the Tullys back into the fold.” 

“They would have come back into the fold if they wanted to keep their heads!” Robert hollered, slamming both palms down onto the table. There is a wildness about him, like a trapped animal, and with a jolt Ned realizes that in the spirit of forging alliances, Jon has likely encouraged Robert to take Lady Cersei to wife. Pawning her off to Ned had been his only hope, and now that hope is vanishing before his eyes. “Who stood in witness at this wedding?” Robert demands. 

“Ser Brynden, her sister Lady Lysa, and the household of Riverrun,” Ned answers stiffly. The dark, quiet sept where he had draped his house colors around Catelyn’s shoulders seems far away, now. She had looked so beautiful standing before him, and despite everything, he had been happy in that moment. 

Robert breathes deep, and he almost finds his smile again at that. “We can simply deny it, then,” he says, his shoulders releasing some of their tension. “I am the king, aren’t I? It would be their word against ours. And our word is the law.” 

“I have no intention of denying it,” Ned replies bluntly. “When we are finished here, I shall return to Riverrun and then bring Lady Catelyn with me to Winterfell.”

Robert stands so quickly that his chair topples backwards, hitting the stone floor with a loud crack. Unsatisfied with his display of his displeasure, he swings his fist at his mug, sending it flying off the table and crashing to the ground. It shatters upon impact, sending shards of clay and rich red wine flying in all directions. “Fine! Fine!” He jabs a finger in Ned’s direction, his face turning red in his rage. “But do not expect to ever bring that whore to court! Keep her in your frozen wasteland! Let her rot there!” 

Ned rises as well, his jaw clenched so tightly that it aches. His vision swims before him, and he can hear the rush of blood in his ears. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jon stand as well, looking warily between his two wards, but even the weary apprehension on his foster father’s face cannot dilute Ned’s anger. “Are you mad? How dare you speak of my lady wife in such a way?” he hisses, the words sticking in his throat so that he must practically spit them at the man he considered a brother. 

“She is a whore, a high-paid whore,” Robert sneers, his eyes narrowing to blue slits and his lip curling in distaste. “She traded her cunt for her castle, for some mercy from the justice she and her family richly deserve. And you, like a fool, fell for it. But then, you always were a fool with women, ever since we were boys – fumbling in brothels, stammering when asking ladies to dance. That’s likely why that’s all your Lady Ashara ever gave you – a dance. She fucked your brother, instead. Brandon probably had this one, as well; they were betrothed long enough. We were the victors in this war, you could have just had her if you really wanted her. But no – you promise the world and wed a traitor at the slightest hint that she might lift her skirts for you.” 

Ned is unaware that he has taken several strides towards Robert until Jon grabs his arm, stopping him in his tracks. He can see his forearm trembling in Jon’s grasp, and his heart pounds loudly enough that he wonders if the other men can hear it. He cannot recall ever being so furious at Robert, ever wanted so much to hit him – the urge leaves him light-headed and breathless. The shadow of guilt that passes over Robert’s face does nothing to abate his rage, and, furious, he rips his arm from Jon’s grasp and turns sharply towards the door. _If I do not leave now, I will kill him where he stands,_ Ned thinks darkly, and though he hears both Jon and Robert calling him, he does not stop or look back. 

He stalks aimlessly through halls that he does not know, past people he does not recognize – lords and ladies jockeying for favor, who stayed safe in their manors and castles but now come calling to court claiming that they had always supported their cause. False friends, every one of them, and Ned would leave Robert to their company gladly. _I have no further business here,_ he tells himself furiously, and he stops, taking stock of his surroundings so that he may try and find his way to his rooms. He would go to Riverrun and bring Catelyn to Winterfell. He would stay safe there with his wife and Lyanna’s son, the boy he would claim as his own, and gods willing, he need never step foot below the Neck again. 

All the corridors of the Red Keep look alike, and Ned’s mood only darkens further when he realizes that he has gotten himself lost. _I was not even paying enough attention to retrace my steps,_ he realizes, and he slides along the stone wall to sit on the ground, his anger melting into sorrow and exhaustion. He has not had a good night’s sleep since finding Lyanna in that tower – if he is being honest, he has not slept well since he shared Catelyn’s bed in Riverrun. 

He has just forced himself to his feet, resigned to wandering the halls in hope of stumbling upon his room or someone who could point him in the right direction, when to his surprise, Jon rounds the corner. Jon looks as weary as Ned feels, and his brow is damp with sweat, which he dabs with his sleeve once he discovers Ned standing there. “I have been looking for you,” Jon says, frowning so that the new lines in his face are even more defined. 

“And I have been looking for my room,” Ned answers shortly. He knows he should not be cross with Jon, yet he cannot help but resent that Jon had let Robert continue with his tirade, rather than try and reign him in as he would have in their youth. _Now that Robert is king, he can act the tyrant whenever he wants,_ Ned thinks sourly. 

“He did not mean it, Ned,” Jon says softly, as though he knows where Ned’s thoughts lie. Likely he does – Ned has never been very good at hiding things from Jon. “You know Robert. He lashes out when he does not get his way, and forgets the slight by supper.” 

“I shall not forget this,” Ned vows, unconsciously curling his palms into fists. “I shall not forget what he said about my wife when for once, I would not do his bidding.” Robert’s cruel, crude words echo in his mind, and he is struck anew with a wave of anger. Robert had not been there in RIverrun; he had not seen the devastation on Catelyn’s face nor felt her tremble with grief in his arms. He could never understand what had transpired between them, nor understand why the only course Ned could see himself choosing was to wed her. He would not see that Ned is glad to have done so. 

“By the time we dine tomorrow, this shall be but a memory,” Jon promises, and there is a hint of pleading in his voice. Suddenly, sympathy overtakes Ned’s anger – Jon has enough work ahead of him, serving as Robert’s Hand. Ned may have bound the Tullys to the new regime, but there would be enemy enough to deal with in the coming moons. 

So he gentles his voice and reaches out to squeeze Jon’s shoulder, to take the sting out of what he must say. “That may be, but I will not be there to see. I leave at first light.” Ned takes a deep breath. “It is time for me to return home.” 

\--

There are times when Catelyn wonders if her husband will ever return. 

She is used to waiting, has spent most of her life waiting for her men to come home, and in truth, Ned has not been gone for so very long. It is the fact that he left her in Riverrun, rather than sending her to Winterfell, that makes her uneasy. Ned had kissed her hand and said that the roads were still unsafe, the lands still restless, and that he would return once he had recovered his sister and they would all go home together. At the time, she had been glad to remain in her childhood home for a bit longer, behind the safe walls she knew so well. 

“You will never see him again,” Lysa had predicted, with red eyes and trembling lips, her voice swaying with too much emotion to be truly malicious. “Everyone leaves and never returns. He will find his sister and return to his king, and he will forget all that has happened here.” 

Catelyn had scoffed – the man she had wed may be still near a stranger to her, but she thought she knew him better than that. Yet, as the moons had passed, one into another with no word from her lord husband, the doubts had begun to grow like weeds, winding through her heart and choking her where she stood. She did not think that Ned had wed her with anything other than an honest heart, but in the loneliness of her chambers, she cannot help but fear that Robert Baratheon or Jon Arryn will change his mind, and force him to deny her. 

_I will not let that happen,_ she tells herself fiercely, though it is not for herself that she vows to fight so hard. Her moonblood has not arrived since Ned departed, and though it is easily disguised beneath the bodice of her gown, after three moons pass Catelyn can detect the slightest curve to her belly when she changes into her nightshift before bed. It is a secret that she holds close to her heart - she wants Ned to be the first to learn the news, but as she does not know where to find him, sending a raven is impossible. She can only hope he will return before her condition becomes evident to everyone. This child will be the heir of Winterfell, and she will not let even the will of a king stand in the way of her babe’s rightful inheritance. 

When Ned’s letter finally arrives, it is abrupt and formal but contains all she wishes to read just the same. _I shall arrive within the next fortnight, and wish to return with all haste to Winterfell,_ he writes. His words send the household into a tizzy as the stewards try to account for the men who will certainly be accompanying her husband, and Catelyn’s maids work to pack the entirety of her life into a handful of trunks. 

Catelyn watches from the walls as the Stark banners approach the gates with a thrum of anticipation in her stomach. Once, those banners had caused her such ire, but now it is as it was before the war, when she would watch Brandon approach with a secret thrill in her heart. Her feelings for Ned are different, more laced with melancholy and loss than the childish giddiness Brandon had wrought in her, but they are there regardless. Even from the distance, she can see him at the head of the party, and she is so glad to see him safe and whole that it takes all of her self-control to not rush to greet him at the gates. 

When she does go to greet him, she is struck by the changes wrought in him. He stands as though the weight of the world rests upon his shoulders, and despite his youth, fine lines are starting to form in the grooves of his forehead. Her joy and anticipation leave her in a rush, and she is struck by the desire to take him in the comfort of her arms, the way that he had once done for her. “My lord,” she says softly instead. 

Ned manages a smile for her, but it does not come close to reaching his eyes. “My lady,” he greets in return, taking her hand and bringing it to his mouth. The brush of his lips against her knuckles is cool and light, like the caress of a breeze. Despite herself, she feels a twinge of doubt in her stomach at his greeting. _Is he regretting what he has done? Has he returned only to put me aside?_

There is little use in wondering, she scolds herself, and instead she greets her husband’s men and welcomes them to Riverrun, as though they had not been intruders at her gate only a few moons past. A banquet had been hastily prepared, when they had received word of the northmen’s impending arrival. The ships that Ned had sent helped replenish their stores, and though the Riverlands remain in unrest, their ships can at least pass through the Trident once more. But seeing his weariness and the sorrow he wears like a cloak, Catelyn suggests that they dine privately in her chambers while the Lord of Riverrun presides over the feast. Edmure beams at the idea, flush with pride at having the spot of honor, while Catelyn gives an imploring look to her uncle, who scowls in return. 

It is worth the Blackfish’s distaste for being made to play host at such an event. With her hand tucked into the crook of Ned’s elbow, Catelyn can feel him relax at her suggestion. “I would like that very much, my lady,” he agrees tiredly. 

It is while they are dining that Ned gives her the news that she had been afraid to ask. He sits with his shoulders slumped, his head turned down to his plate, and Catelyn does not try to force the conversation. But suddenly he visibly steels himself and looks up to meet her eye. “My sister is gone,” he says, so quietly that for a moment, Catelyn thinks – she hopes – that she has misheard him. But there is no mistaking the devastation written across the face she had once thought so frozen, and her heart breaks for him. 

“Oh, Ned…” she whispers, and she reaches to grasp his hand. They sit only a table length apart, but she feels suddenly as though she is reaching for him across a great distance, a chasm that she cannot hope to cross. His fingers intertwine with hers, but his eyes are far away, in some other place. There is an air of almost unbearable loneliness to him, and Catelyn finds herself remembering when she had heard the news about her father. Her uncle had held her in his arms then, and let her weep on his shoulder. Who had held Eddard Stark, as this war dealt him one blow after another? 

Catelyn stands, rounding the table to come stand beside him. She hesitates at his side – the time apart has made her wary again, uncertain as to whether this stoic man would welcome her touch or if he would prefer to disappear into the shell he forms around his heart. Still, he has not been gone so long that she has forgotten the tenderness in his touch, the way he had cupped her face and promised to wed her. 

Her fingers dance over his shoulder, feather-light, and when he leans ever so lightly into her touch, she takes it for the gift that it is and wraps her arms around his shoulders. He is drawn tight as the string of a bow, and his face, when it settles into the warm curve of her neck, is dry. Even after all he has seen and lost, he is still not a man prone to tears. 

_His house was on the winning side of this war, and yet he has suffered so many more losses than I,_ she thinks grimly. She has lost her father, yes – a pain that she still feels every day – but Ned has lost not only his father but two of his siblings as well. It is the nature of war – it takes and destroys, so that even the victors are left with less than before. She does not ask questions of the particulars – how and why and when. They are things she is sure to learn in time; for now, she holds him in silence. 

“What was the purpose of it all, then?” Ned murmurs, his lips cool against her skin. Catelyn hesitates, uncertain if he expects an answer from her, and at a loss as to what she could offer. But before she can even begin to formulate words, he pulls back from her embrace, steeling himself once again with a deep breath. In that moment, his face is as hard and cold as it had seemed the first time she had laid eyes upon him. When he was brought injured in the maester’s sickroom, the fact that he had a face like winter itself had frightened her. Now, to see that same expression brings her nothing but sorrow, knowing the pain it serves to hide. 

She wants to tell him that he does not need that hard mask in her company. She wants to reassure him that she is not such a delicate thing, that she can carry the weight of his grief just as certainly as he had carried hers. She wants to comfort him, to be a rock for him to rest upon, a solid strength he could rely upon. “War rarely has a purpose,” she answers quietly instead, and his face softens just a touch, just enough. Words are still not easy between them, but they are learning. 

“I wish to leave in all haste for Winterfell,” he says. “My brother should hear the news from me. These are tidings not fit for a raven.” 

“Of course,” Catelyn replies. But when Ned turns his face back down to his meal with naught more than a nod, she cannot help but ask, “You do intend for me to accompany you, do you not, my lord?” She hates that she is unable to keep the anxiety from her voice. He has given her no reason to doubt him. He _should_ give her no reason – House Tully may have fought on the wrong side of the war, but they have ruled the Riverlands for three hundred years. She is more than a worthy match for the Lord of Winterfell; Ned had said himself that this marriage was no act of charity or guilt. There is no reason in the world that she should be left in Riverrun like some shameful secret. 

Ned, for his part, seems surprised by her question. “You are my wife. Your place is in Winterfell now.” He glances back down; despite his assurance, there is something uneasy and distracted in his demeanor. It leaves Catelyn off balance, and she can feel the hairs on the back of her neck raise. 

_There is something that he is not telling me,_ she thinks. “And the king?” she tries, prodding to find the source of his concern. “Have you told him?”

Ned winces, as though he has tasted something particularly unpleasant. “Yes,” he replies, a hint of sourness to his voice. “He was not best pleased, but he will become accustomed. He must.” 

“What is it, then?” she asks pointedly. “What else is troubling you, my lord?” It would seem a foolish question, to ask the man with the weight of the world upon his shoulders, but Catelyn cannot shake the feeling that they are dancing along the edge of disaster, that there is something that he is purposefully withholding from her. 

He studies her for a long moment, his grey eyes inscrutable, and Catelyn meets his gaze without inhibition. “I am your wife,” she says gently, and she takes his hand again, holding it between her own. “I would have there be no secrets between us, my lord. I would have us trust one another.” 

Ned does not pull back his hand, but his smile is wan, rueful. “And you have no secrets of your own, my lady?” he asks, his voice laced with doubt. 

“I am with child,” she blurts in response, and his eyes widen in shock. Catelyn had not intended to tell him in such a fashion, but it is the secret that she holds closest to her heart, one she has been waiting to share. Almost shyly, she reaches for his hand and brings it to her belly, pressing his palm over the front of her dress. Through the layers of fabric, the tiny curvature of her belly is barely noticeable, and she is struck with the strangest urge to strip down to her shift, to show him the proof of what they have made together. 

“With child?” he echoes in awe. His fingers ghost along her body in the lightest of touches, and to her surprise, he slides from his chair to kneel on the floor before her, his face level with her belly. He brings his other hand up to join his first, caressing her gently, and she catches her breath at the hope in his grey eyes when he turns his gaze up to her. “You are with child, truly?” he asks. 

“Yes,” she answers, tears springing to her eyes despite herself. _We have both lost much in this war, but now we can build something new. We shall build a family together,_ she thinks, and the tears spill down her cheeks. 

Ned frowns, rising to his feet and reaching out to wipe her face with the pads of his thumbs. “Are you not pleased?” he asks anxiously, and Catelyn smiles through her tears, her doubts dissipating like the morning fog. 

“I have never been happier,” she answers honestly, and she is rewarded with that beautiful smile that she has grown to love, the one that not only reaches his eyes but transforms his face. When he had first ridden through the gate and he had looked so solemn and weary, she had worried she would never see that smile again. _We have lost much, but we are still young. We can be happy,_ Catelyh thinks fiercely. 

As though Ned knows her thoughts, he pulls her into his arms so suddenly that she barely has time to catch her breath before he is kissing her, and she laughs against his mouth. It is the first kiss they share that is not tainted by sorrow and loss, and it is the sweetest kiss of her life. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs against the corner of her mouth, and then he draws back the smallest bit so that he can look at her. “You are well?” he asks anxiously, sliding his hands to her shoulders and squeezing. “Is it safe to travel, or should we remain here until the birth?” 

“You would stay here with me?” Catelyn asks, surprised at his use of the word ‘we.’ 

“Wherever is best for you and our babe,” Ned says firmly, and Catelyn’s eyes fill with tears again, her heart overfull. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, even as she tucks her head beneath his chin, slipping her arms around his middle. His hand threads through the hair at the nape of her neck, his thumb rubbing soothing circles against her scalp, and she cannot help but feel guilty that once again, he is the one comforting her. “The littlest things make me cry anymore.” But truthfully, this is no small thing that he offers her. She knows that he longs to return to the north, to his home. To stay instead by her side until after the birth would be a tremendous sacrifice. It would not be the first time Ned Stark has put her interests before his own, and a part of her that she keeps secreted away loves him for it. “But I am well and ready to travel,” she assures him. “It will be many moons before I am unable.” 

As though unable to resist, Ned’s hand creeps back down to her belly, settling on the side of it as he gazes down between them with an expression of wonder on his face. A swell of pride bubbles in Catelyn’s chest, pushing out the last remaining fears and doubts of the last few weeks, when she had begun to worry that her sister had been right in her suspicions. “And Winterfell is where this child belongs,” she declares, settling her hand on top of his. 

“Yes,” Ned answers, but there is a strange quality to his voice that unnerves her even as his hands tighten on her body, drawing her closer into his embrace. “That is where we all belong.” 

They stand together in quiet, easy silence, until the room grows dark. He does not offer his own secrets in response to her news. Catelyn wonders if he ever will, or if he is determined to carry his burdens alone. For now, his joy at her pregnancy has temporarily soothed his grief over his sister, and Catelyn cannot bear to bring his thoughts back to his troubles. Not just yet. 

“Let’s to bed,” Catelyn says softly, and she lights a candle to guide their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there were some open questions at the end but it wouldn't really feel like ASOIAF if ALL the questions were answered, would it? ;-) 
> 
> This was a project MANY months in the making so I do hope you enjoyed, and I do hope you'll take time to leave feedback! :) Thank you again for reading!


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